


The Song of the Siren

by Spellwriter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Death-T, Domestic Violence, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Novel, Reboot, Sirens, Underage Sex, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 17:55:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 25,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10223849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spellwriter/pseuds/Spellwriter
Summary: Lucius Malloy hosts an incarcerated Death Eater's half-Siren daughter, a young woman promised to Lord Voldemort and destined to lead Harry Potter to his ruin. Major reboot of a story I wrote in 2004(!!!) Lucius Malfoy/OC. Lots of magic, sexy times, and massive backstory for OC. Non canon post GOF.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story in 2004, and on a recent re-read decided to clean up and edit between work, kids, and my own writing projects. It was originally a pretty shameless Mary Sue, but I have tried to temper the worst of those traits and I hope you'll find this a satisfying story. The first several chapters contain very little reference to canon characters, but if you stick it out I think you'll enjoy it when they do arrive.
> 
> Thank you for reading!

Even with the blindfold on, she could feel the crowd pressing in around her. The ring of human detritus hovered in silent orbit, blocking the light of the fires and torches. Though the floor beneath her feet had long since hemorrhaged any memory of warmth, it was not the chill that made her skin ripple with gooseflesh, but the knowledge that somewhere within the circle of black-robed satellites he stood, watching behind a faceless mask.

After a few moments, the little sounds of scraping heels and rustling fabric stilled, and a darker breed of quiet descended. Approaching footsteps beat an arrhythmic metronome against the stone, just loud enough to drown out the sudden hammering of her heart.

Hands fell against her shoulders, fingers dug into the thin fabric of her snow-colored robe. A sob of recognition stole the breath from her lungs, but she disguised the fierce black joy as a cry of pain, though the familiar touch was far gentler than she knew it could be. He pushed her forward several steps, then nudged the back of her legs so that she buckled to her knees.

The protest died in her mouth as she felt the warmth of his presence recede, and only then did she begin to tremble.

To her left the footsteps resumed, followed by a dry, slithery sound she had not noticed before. Something cool and slick, shivering with incredible kinetic power, brushed against her thigh. This time, she could not stifle the thin little scream that split her lips in a gasping rictus of horror. The snake, she thought. A murmuring tide of laughter crested in a hateful wave before subsiding into silence again.

"Icarus did not lie," came the voice, dry and cold as the scales still running the length of her leg. "Perfection."

She stiffened at the sound of her father's name, but at least now she had a direction in which to turn her focus. An icy finger touched her chin and bid her to lift her face to the sky.

"Nothing else would suit you, my Lord."

She turned towards his voice before she had a chance to blunt the swiftness of her response. Lucius Malfoy flinched beneath his mask when he saw the Dark Lord's jaw twitch.

"Remove her robes, Lucius."

Voldemort watched in impassive silence as Lucius stepped forward. He lifted the curtain of raven-blue hair and untied the simple white sheath, gloved hands brushing her skin as he pushed the fabric down her shoulders and allowed it to gather in an ivory puddle around her knees. She swallowed the ember of terror rising in her throat and instinctively wrapped her arms around herself, cheeks blazing with shame.

Lord Voldemort's mirthful chuckle preceded the sting of magic in her wrists, which were suddenly locked and drawn above her head. She wanted so badly to be brave, but there was no greater humiliation than this, baring her flesh to this roomful of strangers, this creature wearing the skin of a man. She gasped at the pressure of a boot-heel driving against the small of her back, forcing her to arch into the solid mass of the body in front of her.

"Oh," came a voice from the circle, a deep male tenor laced with desire. Voldemort hissed an unintelligible spell, and she hear the unmistakable crack of several bones breaking at once, following by a low, keening wail.

"Mine," said the dark lord. He reached down and threaded his skeletal fingers through her hair, wrenching her head back, exposing her throat and driving her spine even harder into the heel that held her in place.

"Is she worthy, Lucius? She has proven herself loyal, bringing the boy with a whisper and a smile. But does she deserve a place in my bed?"

The hand in her hair tightened and was joined by another, this one tracing a path between her breasts, down her belly. The pressure against her spine faltered as Lord Voldemort slid two fingers inside the warm, wet channel between her thighs. Fear made this sudden, ruthless invasion all the more painful than it would have been, even considering the reparative spells that Lucius had cast to restore the appearance of virginity.

She lost it, and began crying in great, ripping heaves. Not just for the agonizing thrust of his fingers inside her, but for the treasonous pleasure ignited by the unwelcome touch. She hated herself in that moment, hated the sea and the moon and the man that had made her, hated the treachery of her body and the inhuman blood beneath the skin that flushed and shuddered in response.

But he could not bring her there, to that place that only one had brought her. She would not – could not allow it. She snapped her tongue between her teeth until the copper salt of blood filled her mouth, using the pain as an anchor to tether herself to the humanity that rose up against her Faery nature.

It was this rebellion that was her undoing, for it broke the spell she did not know she had cast. Lord Voldemort had been in very real danger of forgetting the truths he had been told, the secrets brought to him not an hour before this meeting commenced. Even he was not immune to the power of a Siren – had not been, until he felt the cold rejection of a body promised to be willing, no matter what.

He withdrew his hand and released the spell that held her hands above her head, and stepped away.

"Lucius," he said. "Finish it."

The boot left her back and she dissolved into a heap at his feet, her forehead flush against the stone and her body wracked with sobs.

Lucius hesitated. Something was badly, horribly wrong.

"My Lord?"

"Finish it," he said again, nudging the girl with his foot. She started and stilled in a breath, rising up on her elbows.

"I could never," said Lucius. "I could never touch something that belongs so wholly to you."

"Try," said Voldemort, his voice lower, silky, fraught with threat.

Lucius' arm came around her and lifted her up, pulled her so that she sat on his lap, her legs outflung, the scrap of her gown riding mercifully between her knees. His chest was warm against her back, his breath came in harsh hot bursts, stirring her unbound hair. A barely-suppressed tremble of rage shivered over his muscles.

"Take that silly bauble off," said the Dark Lord. "I want you to feel her as I did."

A tiny metallic snap caught her ears, and the jealous anger emanating from his body became something else, something she knew, a soft, familiar tenderness. He must have removed his gloves, for it was with bare hands now that he traced the line of her ribs, skimmed the flare of her hips, brushed against the hot peak of desire at her center. He legs fell open willingly, eagerly, and she forgot the danger and the audience and the doom that her submission would bring. She rocked against the motion of his hand, urging him to continue, delighting in the guttural moan that warmed her neck.

He found his way inside her gently, a curled finger stroking the place just there, a movement and a motion that only someone intimately familiar with her body would know. She gasped and dug her nails into his black-clad thigh, mouth upturned and teeth bared to graze against the stubble at his jawline.

It was over in moments, it was over too soon, it was over. She thudded back into her body with a grimace, feeling the dampness of sweat on her skin, the cool air replacing the heat of his hand. Her chin dropped to her chest as she was struck with the realization of what he had done, how she had responded.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, the first words she'd spoken since this ordeal began. She felt Lucius' heavy, shuddering sigh behind her. Voldemort tsked above them.

"You fucked her, " Voldemort said. Iphany's stomach dropped as though she'd fallen from a broom. Lucius rushed to respond, stumbling fatally over his words.

"No, your greatness. I would never...I...I knew she was saved for you." He scrambled up, depositing her on the floor in the process, moving swiftly in front of the Dark Lord.

"How many times?"

"I swear to you, my Lord, I did not – "

She heard a scuffle and a shout as someone pulled Lucius back, and someone else reached for her and untied her blindfold. She barely had time to register her surroundings – ancient stone and ceilings so high she could not fathom their end, the faint glimmer of firelight on white masks. Lucius had been stripped of his and driven to his knees next to her, held by two other pale faced Death Eaters.

"I don't believe you." Voldemort rounded on her, and for the first time she looked on him fully. She covered her face with her hands to hide the revulsion and shame.

"You lied to me. You knew she was mine, Lucius. I did not think I had to tell you not to take her." The poison of his words made her feel dizzy and sick; she sank down hard on her heels to keep from tipping over. Beside her, Lucius moaned softly, sagging in his captors' hands.

"I'm...I'm sorry my Lord. I removed the necklace once...and I touched her...and...I could not..."

"I know, Lucius. You are weak. You could not help it. That is why I am going to spare you. Let him up." Voldemort replied, his voice surprisingly light and consoling. She peered through her fingers, watching as the Death Eaters obeyed. Lucius rose to his feet.

He lasted a sight longer than you did, she thought. Voldemort's eyes snapped towards her, as though he could read her thoughts. He grinned, showing a row of jagged, sharp teeth.

"Thank you, my Lord. You are most gracious." Lucius replied, bowing again and again as he turned to make his way back to his place in the circle. Voldemort stopped him before he could rejoin the ranks.

"Wait, Lucius. She must be punished, don't you think? Denying her master, seducing her caregiver. Unforgivable sins, no?"

"Of course," Lucius replied, bereft of tone or feeling. The callousness of his response made her throat constrict with unshed tears. She turned to look at him, dropping her hands, eyes wide and imploring. He could not match her gaze.

"Death is appropriate, isn't it? I'd torment her, first, and make you watch...but your past loyalties are no small matter. I would spare you seeing your little plaything's blood paint the walls."

"My Lord, if I may be allowed to say...I think..." He trailed off, unable to finish at the sight of Voldemort's glare. A thin smile crawled across the Dark Lord's fleshless lips, and he sheathed his own wand.

"You do it, Lucius."

"My Lord, I-"

"Do it, or I'll kill both of you."

She shut her eyes when Lucius reached for his wand. He would not chose her over his own life, but perhaps it was more than that. Perhaps he wished to do her this mercy, and himself. He took his place in front of her, back to Voldemort.

"Look at him, Iphany." The Dark Lord commanded. She shuddered and opened her eyes to Lucius' face, cold and emotionless as he raised his wand. But as he steadied himself, his gaze dropped to meet hers, and she saw the shine of tears in his eyes.

'I'm sorry," He mouthed, repeating her own words back to her. A soft smile touched her face; sunlight breaking through a storm cloud. She nodded.

"Now, Lucius." Voldemort commanded. Lucius drew in a deep breath.

"Avada..."


	2. History

Sirens and Humans have always been distrustful of each other. You knew this before Homer wrote his false tales of half-harpy she-devils luring blameless sailors to a bloody fate against the rocky coast. You knew it before bards sang tales of beautiful women who waited on the shore to drag men to a watery grave. You knew it before the modern world swallowed the old one, and such tales were dragged up out of time to be repackaged and paraded as children's stories, as a derogatory and laughable name for beautiful human women. There are plenty of beliefs surrounding the habits of the Sea-Fey, and all lay every ounce of malice and blame on the Siren.

The truth paints a far different picture, one not so flattering to the singers and storytellers. There are no accounts of lustful men happening upon a coven of moon-bathing Sirens, chasing the slowest to exhaustion, and then taking what he wished from his hard-won prize. And fewer still are the tales of mutual passion, since it always ended with the Siren returning to the sea and her hapless lover drowning himself in an effort to find her again. The revenge of the unwilling always brought justice to the crime against her, and it was from this that humans took their tales of death and violence, for once a man has taken a Siren, he cannot eat or sleep until he has touched her again. Family and friends alike museum t watch him pine the weeks away as he takes solace only in the light of the moon and the sound of the ocean.

Finally, his longing overtakes him and he must return to the sea where he found her. This time, she is waiting, standing half-submerged in the water, smiling openly and beckoning with outstretched arms.

He wades further and further into the ocean, reaching, always reaching for her, until he is sucked down into the undercurrent and never seen or heard from again.

It was one of these incidents that sparked the human's attempted extermination of the Sirens. Loe MacAullen, son to the laird of Shallycob Island, disappeared without a breath of explanation one summer evening. The weeks prior to his vanishing had been filled with talk of his love for a particular Siren often sighted bathing in Clingman's Cove. When Loe's clothing washed up on shore a month later, Laird MacAullen was nine shade of furious. He called for a war against the Sirens, and for a time the bounty fetched for Siren scalp, eyes and hide was enough to make a poor man rich beyond his humblest expectations.

It took six months, but at the end of this time, not a single Siren could be found on the shores of Shallycob. The people declared victory, and they celebrated by burning skin and eyes and hair in a great bonfire at the mouth of Clingman's Cove.

The smell, which should have been unpleasant, sang faintly of sea-lily and starlight. With their faces burned hot by the fire and great triumphant joy in their voices, the people of Shallycob chanted and danced long into the night.

But the Sirens were not extinct. A tiny coven of them, less than a dozen, watched in mute horror as mutilated bits of their sisters floated, ash-light, into the damp summer air.

"We must fight back," whispered Ilia, who at three years shy of a century was counted as the least wise amongst those that remained.

"They outnumber us by the thousands. Would you have all chance of our survival destroyed?" replied her eldest sister, Renali. She winced as the humans flung another sack of blue-black hair onto the pyre.

"No more blood will be shed this night. You know we need them. All but the three ancients have a trace of human blood in their veins. We cannot procreate without them."

Renali was silent for many long moments, and in this time she gathered her youngest sister close. When she spoke again, little Ilia felt a tremble of destiny settle in her chest.

"One day, you will leave the sea and take a human husband. He will give you a daughter, the first of our kind to be born earth-bound. She will know the ways of men, but the song of our losses will ring as freshly in her ears as it does in yours tonight. She will give us our revenge when she delivers unto us the most powerful of all human men," said Renali. "Otilde has foreseen it."

Ilia nodded, knowing better than to argue with the Siren Queen. The idea of taking a husband – one of them – was so abhorrent that she did not trust herself to speak in response. Renali took her silence as assent and pulled away to regard her face in the darkness.

"Until then, we shall sing softly and swim quietly. No harm will come to us, for the moon and the sea will keep us well hidden. Do not be afraid."

And so with final wistful glances thrown towards the orange glow on the shore, the last ten Sirens slipped beneath the waves, unseen and forgotten until Icarus Novara decided to take a stroll along the shore of Clingman's Cove.


	3. Beginning

The Novara Estate was built on Clingman's Cove a hundred years after the last Siren was seen in Shallycob. Admetus Novara came from the mainland in search of solitude and silence for the twilight of his years. Admetus found the Hebridean island charming, just isolated enough to provide peace and quiet. The manor he built was an artistic achievement of stone and mortar, and it became the center of Shallycob's tourism draw. Admetus spent his last ten years in the house on Clingman's Cove, and upon his death ownership of the manor passed to his eldest son, Mortimer.

The house changed hands in this way for another century, and during this time fewer and fewer of Shallycob's citizens flocked to marvel at the house on the cove. The Novaras were a dark, secretive bunch - anyone happening near the mansion at night would return spinning fibs about magic and wizards. The townspeople inevitably named the reporter a raving lunatic, but none the less, the Novaras were not a well received family.

Icarus inherited the estate at twenty, just two years after his graduation from Hogwarts. He was a tall, stately man, handsome in the way that serious men are handsome, and through skill and connections secured himself commendable position as an Auror for the Scottish force. By day he reported to the Ministry of Magic, orchestrating raids and routing out Lord Voldemort's "supporters." By night he donned his Death Eater robes and delivered his friends and coworkers into the hands of the enemy.

Then came the defeat, the tragedy that plunged all Death Eaters into hiding or prison. Icarus came to trial and escaped by association, calling on the defense of his recently acquitted comrade, Lucius Malfoy. It was then that he relocated to the family home in Shallycob, drawing on an impressive family treasury to avoid rejoining the larger wizarding world.

He was alone, but not lonely, for loneliness is a feeling only the good can experience. He was passively content to bide time until the Dark Lord's imminent return, keeping contact with his former fellows and watching his Mark for a summons that never came.

Meanwhile, he spent his days in the estate, attended by a fleet of house Elves. He read and studied, whiling his months away in Shallycob until his reputation dwindled from infamy to obscurity.

One evening, as dusk meandered in from the west, Icarus decided to wander the sandy shore flanking Clingman's Cove. The water here was glass-smooth and still, so clear that he could see small pebbles lining the seabed. The first stars stippled the horizon with cold white fire, a rare sight in the usually cloud-covered sky.

When the moon made his debut, Icarus sat mesmerized by the sight of the flat opal disc mirrored in the water. He was surprised that he had never really noticed how lovely the cove was at night, scored by the ancient rhythm of the ocean in the distance. He glanced down at the water again, expecting to catch a glimpse of his own reflection. What he saw instead elicited an unmanly screech and a frantic scrambling for the shore.

The face grinning up at him was not his own.

The woman rose out of the water, staring him down with eyes that shone incongruously bright in the darkness. Her hair was blue-black, plaited and parted over her white shoulders, threaded with tiny shells and pearls. She smiled, and Icarus sat down in the sand with a bone-rattling thud.

Had he spent any length of time in Shallycob's main streets, he would have identified the strange woman in an instant. Paintings of Sirens decorated every restaurant and shop in town, and businesses sported names like "The Siren-Song" and "The Ocean Witch". But being a wizard he had little use for the Muggle village, and being a pureblood he had even less use for those that inhabited it.

As it were, Icarus could not fathom a reason as to why a creature of such breathtaking beauty would be lolling about at the bottom of an ocean-fed pond.

Suspicion seized him for a moment as the girl drew closer. He started skittishly, heels digging into the damp sand beneath him. She reached behind her neck and unfastened a slim silver chain bearing a blue gem shaped like a crescent moon.

"I belong to you." She whispered in the wind's voice, breathy and warm. The sound of her words alone drew Icarus in and held him fast, and suddenly he could think nothing but 'mine,' and 'now.' He opened his hand to an unfamiliar weight, the crescent on the silver chain nestled in his palm. The edges blurred with an indigo glow.

"Who are you?" He breathed.

"Ilia," She replied, reaching for his hand. He laid his palm in hers and gasped at the surge of heat that passed from her skin, his vision going momentarily gray as she pulled him up to stand.

"You're going to marry me," Icarus said. Ilia laughed and nodded, and Icarus stumbled backwards, knocked senseless by the music of her voice. She worked herself under his arm, and when he had recovered, they took the path from the cove together towards the warmth of the house on the hill.

Far out in the surf, hidden by the crashing waves, three Sirens smiled as the man led their sister away.

Ilia the Siren became Ilia Novara a week later at a sunset ceremony on Clingman's Cove. Witnesses were few, a handful of Icarus' friends watching in mild shock as he wed a woman so lovely that to look at her too long brought tears to the eyes.

It was the first and last time anyone saw Ilia. Once the wedding was over, Icarus guarded her as jealously as a secret. The villagers grew even more distrusting, for the man who had recently only been seen in the evening, alone in the courtyard or on the balcony could now be spotted in the company of a raven-haired beauty that resembled the paintings and statues in the town-square with an unsettling likeness. Sometimes she would sing to him, and the sound of her voice drifted over the village and drove grown men into the streets until angry wives dragged them back in by their shirt collars.

Everything seemed to be progressing exactly as Ilia and her sisters had foreseen, until the night she brought her daughter Iphany into the world.


	4. Elegy

"Master Novara! Master Novara!"

Icarus glared blearily up from the bottle of brandy, directing a half-eyed squint at the ugly House Elf screeching into his parlor. The stupid creature (Blat? Splat? He couldn't remember) wore a misshapen shift that was usually dirty, but never streaked with red. Panic pounded through the haze of drunkenness, propelling him to stand.

"Master Novara, please come quickly! Miss Ilia is not well, she is giving the baby and now she cries for the pain, Master! I think she is dying!" Blat burst into tears and covered her face with grimy hands.

Icarus was out of the chair like a shot, scrambling down the hall to the birth-room. As he passed, each torch on the wall sputtered and lit, following his procession and casting deep gray shadows in his wake.

The door flew open and he was immediately struck with the rich, sick smell of death. Icarus brought a trembling hand to his mouth and covered his nose.

Though the hallway was dark and shadowed, in here the fire blazed and the stars poured in through the skylight. The glow threw Ilia's sprawled form on the narrow bed into sharp relief, traced her sweat soaked limbs and face. Another House Elf stood by the bed, clutching a wriggling bundle in her tiny, spindly arms.

"Icarus," Ilia whispered. He drew near and knelt by the bed, averting horrified eyes from the sight of the still growing patch of scarlet that gathered between her legs.

"Oh, Ilia. You...you're going to be fine." Icarus stammered, taking his wife's hand and clutching it to his chest. Ilia winced and arched weakly as another dark sticky current of blood discharged from her battered womb.

"Icarus. Take care of Iphany," Ilia sighed, turning her pale face her husband's. Tears burned the corners of Icarus' eyes. Even in the moments before death, she was still unbearably beautiful.

"You're not dying," Icarus replied, this time in the stern and inarguable tone he used with disobedient servants. Ilia smiled softly, and used what was left of her strength to lay a hand on his cheek. Against every grudge and memory of vengeance ingrained in her soul, Ilia had fallen in love. She had not meant to; in doing so she had forsaken her sisters, forgetting the common peril that bound them in sorrow and revenge. She should have given birth in the sea, as had all of her sisters before her, but shame kept her locked inside the house as her time came, stepping out only long enough to take her nightly swim in the cove. Her body was not meant to bear a child as humans did, but stubbornness convinced her to ignore the unnatural pain, the nightmares of her own death, the visions of her daughter growing up alone in the shadow of her father's lost love. Poor little Iphany - she would never fully understand, she would not...

"Tell her who she is," Ilia whispered, her hand constricting feebly around her husband's. She took a breath, let it out, hitched another, and did not move again. The pupils in her watery green eyes grew until they eclipsed the color within. Her eyes fluttered, then closed.

A great gaping emptiness roared inside Icarus' chest, and he emitted a dry, choking sob. His love for Ilia had been his only softening, and as she slumped lifelessly in his arms, she took with her every ounce of decency and compassion that he had left in his heart.


	5. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> K

"She's gone."

A mournful whisper rippled across the trio of Sirens hovering near the thorough-way to Clingman's Cove. The moon was new, which meant they should have been asleep beneath the coral grove on the other side of the island. Instead they were huddled, handfast, struck dumb and helpless.

"She was our last hope for revenge." whispered Renali. She released the hands that kept her circle-bound and glided forward towards the stiller waters of the cove.

"Do not despair yet. The child lives, and it is she that I see in my dreams of justice. She is the one who will save us," replied Otilde. She, Renali, and Alba were the last Sirens left in the world, the first daughters of the Moon Lord and the Lady of the Ocean. Their immortality depended on the continuation of the Siren race, and without Ilia to instruct her earth-bound daughter, they would submit to the fate they had been promised; age and demise, the transformation from creatures of an ancient world into legend. They would never receive the redemption they deserved. They would become the sum of the stories and lies that destroyed them.

"We cannot let that come to pass," Alba said, for her sister's thoughts bloomed warm and fluid in her own mind. Renali whirled back to regard them, her face contorted in paroxysm of beautiful rage.

"We must go to her," she said. "That man cannot raise a daughter of the moon and sea. . If he does not die from grief, he will be destroyed from within and become a monster. She will not-"

"No," Otidle cut in, snatching her sister's hand. Renali's eyes flashed a terrifying fire in the darkness, and Otilde could feel her sister's indignant rage. "That is not her path. You have trusted my vision this long, can't you-"

"Then you knew Ilia would die?" Renali seethed, wrenching her hand free. "If you say yes, you are a murderer, and if you say no, your visions are worthless."

Otilde was silent for a long time, her attention caught by the yellow eyes of the house lights on the hill. One by one they extinguished, the last being the flickering torchlight of the tower where Ilia's empty body lay.

From the dark house there came a long, keening cry, rising in pitch and tone, spitting the silent evening until it filled every crevice of the cove, sounding and resounding in a sorrowful crescendo. Alba covered her ears and slid beneath the waves, unable to bear the weight of the man's grief.

As the wailing continued, Otilde began to speak, so softly that Renali was forced to lean in to hear her.

"Our Lord and Lady gave each of us our own gifts," she said. "I do not claim to know every path that can be taken. I can only see what they have given me permission to see, and I only know what they wish for me to know. For now, we must wait. Ilia was of my own line, so she possessed a fragment of the gift I was given. If she chose to stay, knowing she would not survive, then she must have known something we did not."

She slid closer to Renali, draping her arms around her sister's lean white shoulders.

"We must trust our mother and father. We must trust our sister. We must trust ourselves, and we must trust the child. She will know who she is; even if the man does not tell her, though I believe that he will. He will not be able to help but love her, even if he cannot allow his heart the luxury of caring. Her nature will guide her, she will learn to sing with her first moon cycle, and we can speak to her then in a way she will understand. You must believe me, Renali. This is the way."

Sometime during her speech, Alba resurfaced. She was the kindest among them, the quickest to love, the quickest to believe. Otilde felt warm fingers lace through her own; first Alba's, then, reluctantly, Renali's. Her regal face was composed and still, the line of her full, rosy lips set in resignation.

But Otilde saw the hope there, too. She felt it kindle in her own heart, felt it breathing in the dangerous wild pulse of their ocean mother, the hidden black face of their moon-lord sire. Hope was all they had, all they needed. For now.

One by one, the Sirens looked to the moonless sky. Starlight slivered the perfect features, coaxing first one, and then another, until finally the trio lifted their voices to the night, rising above the shriek of grief from the house on the hill.

You have heard this song before, in the moment preceding a thunderstorm, or the instant between sleep and dreaming. It rings beneath the sound of lovemaking and traces through tears of sorrow and joy. It is sweet and sustained, it is bitter and unkind. But once the storm is over, and the dreams end, and lovers part or sadness fades – the song remains.

That night, the wistful denizens of Shallycob kept their windows open and let the strangely musical breeze dance unheeded inside their houses. Children slept soundly, with dreamless abandon, husbands professed love with an ardor that had lain dormant for years.

Every window was open, and every man knew peace.

Every man except Icarus Novara.


	6. Ignite

The house elves were replaced by a nanny not long after her birth, when it became clear that despite their blind devotion, the diminutive creatures had no idea how to properly care for a human (or, half-human) child. Icarus hired a wet nurse from Stornoway, a girl out of a newer Pureblooded family who had lost her own child to the Sleeping Sickness. Still shattered from the death of her son, Helena took the strange and beautiful newborn to her breast without hesitation, half-listening when the girl's father explained the circumstances of her birth. He placed a Secrecy gag on her, so that any time she was asked about the nature of her employment, she began reciting lines from Yeats in a clipped, brisk tone.

Over the years, Icarus' involvement in Iphany's life was as scant as possible. He was not there when she sat up for the first time, or took her first step, or spoke her first word. Instead he was often on the mainland, rebuilding himself as an affable member of the wizarding world. He assumed a mid-level position at the Ministry, reasoning that his long absence and his reputation would require repair before assuming a higher consideration. People seemed to know better than to ask about his widowing, and even fewer had any knowledge of the fact that he had a child. He would visit her now and again, but with every passing year she looked more and more like her flawless mother and he could not bear the sight of her face.

When he was home, he was shut up in his study. Sometimes Iphany could hear voices from within, low and dangerous and intriguing. She was never allowed inside when Father had guests. But she yearned to see other people, and would sometimes stand outside the door for hours on end, listening to the human hum of conversation. Once or twice she fell asleep out in the hall, with her face still pressed against the door. The second time was the last; every time thereafter when she felt the urge to sneak her way back down, she remembered the ache in her backside and thought better of the endeavor.

Helena discouraged the child from calling her "Mother," as much as it pained her to do so. She grew as any child would, though there were certain milestones she reached that other children did not. At three, she complained of an itching behind her ears, and Helena parted the wispy black curls to find a row of tiny gills.

And there were some secrets she never shared with Helena. Like how she felt at midnight on a full moon evening, when sky was seared from horizon to horizon with a multitude of stars, or the music that spun inside her head whenever she walked by the ocean. She bathed nightly in the cove, a necessary evil that, when neglected, resulted in lethargy and illness. The word Siren was in her mind before she knew how to think. She asked her father once what it meant, when he was home for longer than a moment and still enough for her to speak to him.

It was the first and last time Iphany ever heard him speak of her mother. He told her that she, in fact, was a Siren, and that she possessed more latent power in her eyes than most grown witches did in their entire schooled bodies. She learned that one day she would grow to be beautiful beyond comprehension, that her voice could lure and curse in an instant, that the touch of her fingers could bring a man to tears.

He must have been drunk, or feeling particularly pleasant, because that evening he also showed her the amulet her mother had given him on the first day they met. Icarus told her that the gem protected him from the full force of her mother's touch, but would not elaborate on its origin.

Iphany often wondered if she was the last Siren left in the world, for she got hold of a few books from Shallycob that spoke of the mass murder of hundreds of Sirens in the eighteenth century. This was a lonesome thought, and she tried not to give it much consideration.

Iphany's life itself was lonesome, but she knew nothing else. She spent her childhood much as her father had his own adult life; flitting from room to room, learning every carving and crevice of the Novara estate. Helena came around less and less as she grew, and then one day she did not come at all. The house elves resumed again the daily tasks of caring for her, bringing her new books, preparing her meals and mending her clothing. Some nights she would climb from her window to the sound of Blat's pleading cries and sit on the roof to watch the snap and gleam of the lights from Shallycob, seized with both longing and inexplicable rage.

Until, one evening, not long after her eleventh birthday, she did not have to wonder any more.

She had been feeling quite odd the entire afternoon, and skipped dinner to wade early in the cove. The sun was just touching the wide blue mouth of the ocean when it began - a soft tickle in the back of her throat. The feeling persisted as she slid into the deeper water, spreading both down into her chest and up through to her tongue and teeth. The promise of a full moon whispered at the edge of the place where the sea met the sky. It filled her with peculiar giddiness.

The last few months had been newly exciting. When she turned eleven, Icarus hired a tutor and ordered that she begin her instruction in the art of magic. The tutor was a bright young woman with none of the pallor and melancholy that Helena had worn, bearing stacks of books and parchment, glass vials of amber liquid and small black stones. She brought Iphany very own wand, fashioned from the yew tree in their back garden and cored with a single strand of her dead mother's hair.

She taught Iphany how to turn flowers into heart shaped fans, how to brew a potion that would remove warts, and how to grow a fern that produced a repellant to keep banshees at bay. So abundant was Iphany's progress that Angie found herself consulting her lesson plan for second year students just six weeks after she began teaching. Earlier that day they had brewed a particularly difficult concoction meant to rid Iphany of a nasty headache. It had been quite successful, but now Iphany wished they had mixed something for her scratchy throat, too. She turned over in the water and sucked in a mouthful of brine, humming the cool, salty liquid through the gills behind her ears. The tonal buzz of the hum felt good – felt like it was easing the tickle in her throat and chest. She did it again, a little louder, flipping again to her back to open her mouth to the sky.

The sun sank, the moon popped into full view over the water, and Iphany began to sing. The itch in her throat was gone, replaced by a liquid warmth that slid through her body and lit pleasantly in the center of her belly. She was filled with a sharp golden glow that bubbled and gasped from her lips in a song she was certain she had never heard before excluding the deep green dark of her dreams.

The water was velvet, stroking across her gangly limbs, she felt languid and luxurious as she sifted across the cove, trailing the glassy surface with her fingers.

She did not know how long it took for her to realize that she was not singing alone anymore. With a gradual awakening of her subconscious, she noticed that there was harmony to her high notes, a perfect blend gliding beneath the wordless tune. She turned to the mouth of the cove and saw the three Sirens, their sleek dark heads bobbing just above the water. Her eyebrows shot up and she tried to stop singing so ask to ask them who, what they were, but her voice refused to cooperate. The three strange women each smiled in turn as she glided closer to them. Iphany's high, sopranic voice was as pure and pristine as winter, and so clear that it floated easily across the water, over the hill and into the house.

One of the Sirens approached her and held out a hand.

"IPHANY!" came her father's voice, shattering the spell and filling her with an abrupt, implacable fear. The Sirens froze, cast horrified glances at one another, and disappeared beneath the waves.

But their presence was not the reason Icarus screamed, for he in truth could not see so far, and had only heard the sound of Iphany's voice drifting across the dunes. It was a melody so familiar that it cracked the old, scabbed pain of losing Ilia so many years before. Iphany barely had time to react as her father reached inside his robes, unsheathed his wand and said something she could hardly hear, something like -

"Crucio!"

Pain ignited in her muscles and bones, shattered the exotic pleasure of her song.

Iphany screamed and screamed and screamed, and only when her voice broke and rasped to silence did the torment abate. She struggled to the shore in a thin red haze and used what strength remained to heave her naked, shaking body to the sand, where she collapsed with a shudder and tried to fathom why her father would do this terrible thing. His shadow fell across her prostrate body and she flinched, arms wrapped protectively around her aching skin. He was muttering darkly to himself, words she could not hear, though their meaning sparked wild and unhinged in the corners of her mind. The heavy silk of his cloak flopped across her body, and he gathered her up in his arms, face turned away from her whimpering cries. He carried her across the hill and into the house, still whispering, brought her up to her room, deposited her on the bed, and left her for the house elves to attend.

Iphany's first coherent though was one of awful betrayal. She shivered beneath the down comforter, tears streaking her face and pooling beneath her cheek to stain the pillow. She knew that the Sirens she had seen were her kin. They had looked upon her so kindly and beckoned her with hands that would stroke and soothe instead of strike. She'd felt wanted in that single, shining instant.

And the feeling of singing - she reflected on it now and had no name for the bliss beneath the moonlight, but knew that it was a thing she could no longer live without. But it was the singing itself that so incensed her father. If the Sirens had known her song and her mother was one of them, that meant that at some point he must have heard her mother sing the same tune. Was the memory of her death still so fresh after all these years? She shuddered to think of what he would do if he caught her singing again, but she simply could not imagine a night without it after this first taste of peace.

Giving voice to a pained sigh that rattled her still-sore ribs, Iphany drifted, shakily, into a spare, troubled sleep.

And for the first time, she dreamed of her mother.


	7. Vision

"Iphany."

The silky voice curled around Iphany's ears, drawing her up into the walls of the dream. The woman in the chair next to her bed wore her sad smile like an ill-fitting robe; the expression too dim to reach her wide green eyes.

"Mother?" Iphany rose to her elbows, pleasantly surprised to find that all traces of pain had vanished. Ilia nodded and reached out a hand to stroke her daughter's finely sculpted cheekbone, the pads of her fingers bridging over shell thin eyelids and pursed, trembling lips.

"Is this a dream?" Iphany asked.

"Yes. But don't discount it so quickly, for I have many important things to tell you." Ilia replied, sliding to sit on the bed with her child and gathering the leggy adolescent into her arms. Iphany was silent, skirting more tears at the haunting familiarity of her mother's voice, face, and scent.

" I wish-"

"So do I, my darling, but it was not meant to be," Ilia replied, pulling back so that Iphany could look into her eyes. She took a deep breath, as though what she was about to say needed strength and steadiness to support it.

"In some years time, your father will send you away. I'm not sure where, or why, or with whom, but it is going to happen. I want you to be prepared for this. You will be given a task, and you must do your best to fill it exactly as you are told."

"What must I do, Mother?" Iphany asked, feeling a strange, fleeting bolt of destiny that shadowed her thoughts for a moment before flitting on to greater deeds.

"I don't know that either, my part is not important, for you will know what to do when the time comes. All of this, Iphany - all of this leads to your greatest task. You know of the slaughter, don't you?"

"Yes, I've read of it. And I've had dreams before. I saw what happened. I- "

"Good," Ilia replied, interrupting, her tone more hurried now. The lines of her skin began to drift with a faint, snowy blur. "You're going to be the one who sets all of those deaths right, Iphany. In time you will meet a man, the most powerful of all human men. And you will bring him to the three Sirens you saw in the sea today. I know it does not make sense now, but the path will be provided, and you must only be brave enough to follow it."

Iphany could see the wall and window through her mother's body now. She was fading, returning to the world beyond the dream that bound them.

"I'll try, Mother. I'll do what I can." She said solemnly, holding back the urge to beg and scream for her mother not to leave her again.

"I know you will. And Iphany, please remember this, for I know the chances will be plenty. Do not fall in love. Love destroys us, it destroys the men we chose, and it will be your ruin if you allow yourself to be weak. Never, ever give your heart away."

By this time she was nothing but a voice, and Iphany strained to hear the last of her words. The advice burrowed into her heart, settled there, and began to rot. Tendrils of cold unwound from the festering wound, crept through the web of vessels beneath her skin, dulled the memory of her father's violence until it dissolved into a distant gray whisper.

"Wait," she said, lifting her hand to brush the curious empty ache in her chest, "I -"

Iphany's eyes fluttered, shallow green still half hazed with sleep. Blat, the House Elf, jumped immediately from her hiding space behind the dresser as soon as the saw her mistress waking. The jittery thing snapped her fingers and produced a tray lightly laden with breakfast. Blat opened her mouth to speak, but one stern look from the girl sent her squealing under the bed.

Iphany picked at her food. Something was different, but she could not name it, could not follow the slippery thoughts that ran and trickled like water through fingers. She rose from the immense bed, untangling her legs from the covers and planting bare feet on the cool hardwood floor. The shadow of her reflection danced in the window as she approached.

Outside, the sand gleamed a fierce bone white, scudded here and there by dry scrubs of pathetic sea-grasses. The sun burned white-gold on the water, a lonely sailor riding the mirror of a cloudless sky. She sneered at the brightness, reached up with both hands to wrench the curtains shut.

"Blat," She said, whirling to face the bed. A pair of large amber eyes appeared from beneath the dust ruffle.

"Yes! Mistress Iphany Novara, what can I do for you?" Blat exclaimed as she crawled out and drew herself up in front of the girl.

"Round up all the Elves and draw the curtains. If my father has any objections, tell him-"

"Master Novara has left, Mistress Iphany. He has gone away this morning." Blat interjected, slapping a hand over her mouth when she was finished, even though her mistress had never been the kind to punish her for speaking out of turn. Iphany simply looked pensive and a touch relieved. She glanced at the grandfather clock on the wall. Angie would Apparate in the library in less than an hour for her lessons.

"Fine, then. Get out of here and do what I said." Iphany responded crossly, raising her nightdress over her head and discarding it on the floor. As she passed the mirror in her trek towards the bathroom, she paused for a moment. Her thin, ribby body wasn't much to look at, just beginning to bud into womanhood and showing the first signs of filling out. She regarded herself with detached interest, smoothing her hands over her flat stomach and rounding hips. When she glanced past her reflection, she saw Blat still standing in the doorway.

"Out!" Iphany barked, pointing viciously towards the door. Blat squealed and skittered out, and Iphany pattered into the lavatory to bathe.

Angie had never seen her charge so volatile. Iphany snapped and sneered at her every gentle prodding, refusing to answer any question regarding her newfound apathy. They'd always gotten along, keeping up a mild repartee that seemed to maintain Iphany's generally pleasant nature. She was spoiled, certainly, but not unkind in the way that many rich children tended to be. Or had not been, until today. Something must have happened to her, and while Angie was not inclined to meddle much in her mysterious employer's affairs, she had never really trusted Icarus Novara.

"Iphany," she said, "Are you certain you're all right?"

"Angie, if you ask me again I'm going to tell father I need another tutor," the girl replied. Angie sat back in her chair, eyebrows comically high over the rims of her glasses. She opened her mouth to respond, but the frigid, empty look in Iphany's eyes stilled the words behind her teeth. Angie shook her head and opened the second-year potions textbook, and cleared her throat before beginning to read.

They zipped through the day's lesson. Apparently Iphany's attitude did not apply to her studies. In fact, she seemed even more devoted to the task of learning than usual, forgoing lunch to continue studying far in to the afternoon. The only time she asked Angie anything out of the ordinary was near five, just as she was getting ready to leave.

"Angie. What is Crucio?" She asked, flipping idly through a volume on Transfiguration as Angie readied herself to leave for the evening.

"My goodness, Iphany! Where did you hear of that?" Angie asked, pausing in the middle of shoving her books and supplies back into a bag. She studied the girl with serious brown eyes, shoving her glasses back up on her nose with one finger. It occurred to her then, for the first time, that Iphany was really beginning to grow up. Her round, childish face was thinning, hinting at the sleek structure of cheekbone and fine arch of brow that would be revealed with the passage of a few short years. Angie felt a stab of sorrow so sudden and poignant that she almost felt the hot rush of tears. Iphany looked up from her book, startled by the woman's reaction.

"It doesn't matter. What is it?" She demanded, marking her place in the book with a finger. Angie chewed on her lower lip before responding.

"Crucio is the verbal incantation of the Cruciatus curse. It's one of the three Unforgivable curses. It causes the victim pain beyond imagining, and invoking its use once will earn you a life sentence in Azkaban. Where on earth did you -" She trailed off, taking in Iphany's stony expression and suddenly understanding.

"Iphany...did...your father -"

"That's enough. You can go now. I'll see you tomorrow." Iphany interrupted, now appearing to be absorbed in her reading again. Angie opened her mouth as if to say something else, and then decided against it. She finished packing her books, fighting back the youthfully maternal urge that tried to propel her to comfort the girl.

Iphany did not look up until she heard the crack of Disapparation. She closed the book, absently folding the page back to mark her last paragraph. An interesting thought tiptoed into the back of her brain, one that would have been completely out of character the evening before. Yet the new, vast stretch of indifference that had matured in her mind demanded she nourish this new curiosity, so she placed the book on the side table and rose from wing-backed chair.

"Blat!" She shouted, and within a moment the nervous Elf appeared in front of her, twisting her dirty rags in both trembling hands. She did not know what she had done to make her sweet mistress so angry this day, when all the days that preceded it had seen her treated in a manner she had not known since Mistress Ilia passed. Mistress Iphany was good and kind, like her mother had been. What had changed?

"Crucio," She muttered, and Blat flinched, for she had heard that word before, and knew what was coming.

But the expected pain did not descend, thought Blat thought she might have preferred it to the cold flash of anger that passed over her mistress' eyes.

"Crucio!" Iphany said again, giving her wand an impatient flick. Still, nothing. Blat cowered with her hands over her eyes, waiting for a torment that never came.

"Oh get out of here," Iphany spat out, flinging her wand across the room. It clattered against the ocean tapestry on the wall and rolled innocuously across the stones.

Blat vanished with a squeak, and Iphany went back to her reading.

"This is not the way it is supposed to be, Otilde!" Renali seethed, lowering the large pearl orb and letting it drift back to the ocean floor. She could just see the Novara house over the hill, but the distance and obstruction of sand did not hinder her view, for Sirens have ways of observing those they love that are undetectable to the eyes of men.

"She had no other choice, Renali. Ilia knew what she was doing. The freeze on Iphany's heart is not unbreakable, you know Ilia would not make it so. She is protecting her daughter, our little sister, from the same pain that traps her own soul even in death," Otilde responded. She would not allow the doubt to creep into her voice.

"The poor darling," Alba said, gliding up to join them. "She was beginning to love the girl who tutored her. She could have so used a woman to guide and protect her. And her father...it seems an unjust risk, to keep her there. We do not know if he will continue to hurt her."

"Risk is all we have," said Renali. "And at least Ilia's enchantment will protect her. It won't stop the pain, but it will prevent further suffering, further damage to her spirit."

"If she ever seems in real danger..." Otilde trailed off and shook her head. "I would rather see our race die and our debtors go unpunished than allow him to destroy her."

"Can't you see?" Renali asked, unable to keep the sneer out of her voice.

"I can," Otilde admitted after a while. "He will try once more. But I don't know if he will succeed, or if she will survive."

It was a long time before any of them could swim far from the cove.


	8. Offering

Time passed, as it does, rifling across the days and seasons, riding the ellipses of the heavens as the earth spins along, unconcerned. Iphany kept up with her lessons, followed the empty, predictable path of her life, growing in body but not in spirit. Her mother's enchantment served its purpose, removing Iphany from the loneliness of her life, insulating her from the knowledge of her father's indifference. She lost all love for the small things that once pleased her; morning birds chattering to one another, the melt of fresh jam of her tongue, the smell of unread stories when the sun warmed the books in the library.

Her only joy came from her nightly swim, though she had not been sure, after that evening, that her father would allow it to continue. But he made no move to stop her, and she wisely kept her song to herself, though each day without it robbed some of the sparkle from her eyes and dulled the moonlight gleam of her skin. Within a year Angie excused herself from her position, no longer able to watch the girl fading away like a ghost that does not know it is dead. She was replaced with a stern older woman who insisted that her student keep to the proscribed curriculum, halting any examination of talents beyond the typical path of a well-trained Witch. It was all the same to Iphany.

Her father came and went, and if he felt remorse for the way he had tortured her, he did not speak of it. They dined together when he requested it, usually a tense, compulsory affair. Iphany suffered the meetings and answered his questions, noting that as the years wore on he looked at her more easily, that he did not cringe from the sight of her face.

Perhaps my resemblance to the Siren peaked at eleven, and I'm starting to look more like him, she reasoned one evening over dinner. Icarus tucked in to a nauseating slab of steak with mechanical precision, his hard, unlined faced seamed with a grimace as he swallowed each bite.

"And Transfiguration?" He asked. "Any progress there?"

"Some," she replied. "Salt, please?" He nudged it across the table, but looked away as she upended it into her glass of water.

"I do fine with inanimate objects. Pencils to knives, stones to roses, that sort of thing. But I can't seem to manage anything alive."

"What happens when you try?" He asked. She shrugged and slid another raw oyster off the iced platter in front of her. Her tongue knew that the chilled burst of jellied brine was delicious, and it reminded her enough of the sea to coax a small sigh as it slipped down her throat.

"Whatever it is usually dies," she said. "We stopped after I turned a mouse inside out. Madame Adienne was not pleased."

"Interesting," said her father. He finished his steak and dabbed his mouth with a napkin.

"Madame thinks it's the Siren in me," she continued, ignoring the clatter of cutlery that her father dropped with a shudder. "Since each discipline tends towards a particular element. Transfiguration being an earth-magic, I'm not very good at it."

"I told you not to speak that word," Icarus warned. "And you shouldn't be talking to Adienne about it, either. What you are has no bearing on your ability to learn magic that any other competent witch could master without much trouble."

"Except that it clearly does," Iphany argued. "I'm not-"

"Stop making excuses," Icarus snapped back. "It's so common."

"Well what does it matter, anyway?" She said, a sting of anger touching her imperturbable calm. "It's not as though I'll ever get a chance to use any of it, unless you plan on freeing the house Elves and putting me to work."

"It matters, you impertinent child, because you are a Novara."

Icarus stood up, having clearly exhausted his tolerance.

"You come from a long and distinguished line of Pureblooded witches and wizards, and I would never allow any child of mine to grow up without the proper training befitting your heritage."

"I'm no Pureblood," she said, "Unless you're going to tell my that mother was not a Siren, in which case I'll have to ask -"

"Don't. Say. That. Word," Icarus said. He gripped the back of his chair until his knuckles blanched. Seized with rebellion, Iphany stood up, too, knocking over her water glass in the process.

"Siren," she said. Her father staggered and winced. "Siren, siren, siren, siren!"

He let out a horrible, window-rattling cry and clapped his hands over his ears. Oh, it felt good to shout. It felt good to use her voice, felt good to submit to the rage burning beneath her skin. He wanted to pretend she was ordinary, pretend that she had simply sprung up like a toadstool in some damp corner of the garden, pretend she had no mother, pretend she was human.

I am not human, came the unbidden thought, wild and loud. How had she never allowed herself the luxury of fury before? All this time she had accepted her numbness as absolute, but really she had been looking for meaning in all the wrong places. If she got angry enough, she could feel – really feel something.

"Siren," she said again, this time in a languid, melodic purr. It was almost a song. It should be a song. Her father was on his knees, weeping gently.

"Si-i-i-i-iren," she sang. A hot white bloom unfurled its petals in her chest. She grinned and crouched down. "I'm a Siren, daddy."

Suddenly his hand shot out and closed around her throat. Her fingers went immediately to his, digging and scraping at the back of his hand. He lunged at her with an animal cry, knocked her back and to the floor. Her head struck the stone with an acute red crack.

"Stop," she wheezed, knees and legs flailing to seek purchase on some vulnerable part of him. He dropped all of his weight on her and tightened his fingers. His tears dropped warm rain on her cheeks and forehead.

"Daddy," she gasped. "Daddy, I'm sorry, please -"

He would not relent. Her eyes rolled up, past his sweating, anguished face, caught a glimpse of the copper ceiling, the chandelier firing elegant silver and gold. A sticky funnel of coldness pricked the edge of her vision. Her wriggling faltered, stuttered, stilled. Beneath the pounding roar in her ears she could hear something else, a melody that was at once both memory and mystery, a round of faint, high voices lifted in chorus.

They are calling me home, she thought, as the world went black.

She drew a swift, unhindered breath. Above her was only the copper and crystal, her fathers face was gone. She flung herself up from the floor, sucking gasp after gasp of warm air, tears of relief stinging her eyes. What had happened? Where did he go?

Her eyes focused on the blurry form a few meters ahead of her. Icarus crouched with a hand on his left arm, hissing in pain. Had she hurt him in some way? She shook her head to clear the remaining shreds of unconsciousness, chest burning as she continued to pant.

He looked up at her then, a litany of emotions darting in and out of his eyes. Scales of anger, sorrow, remorse – and then his expression settled on a grim, determined hope.

"He's back," Icarus said. Iphany shook her head, not trusting her swollen throat to support the words her mouth wished to speak.

Her father produced his wand and raised it in her direction. Iphany froze, knowing that he now meant to finish the job that his hands had begun. She shut her eyes, waiting for the blow.

"Imagomemori!"

She did not recognize the spell, but when no pain or blackness came, she carefully opened her eyes. A blinding blue light surrounded her, obscuring her father from view. With a flick of his wrist the light receded, trickling back into the tip of his wand until it vanished entirely.

He glared down at her once more, and then he Disapparated.

. . .

For the third time, Harry Potter - the child! - had eluded death, this time surrounded by over two dozen Death Eaters. He'd even actually managed to stun two of them as he made a mad roll and dash for the Triwizard cup that would send him back to safety at Hogwarts. Avery and Nott slumped in a disoriented heap against a broken-winged granite angel gone black with moss. Voldemort Crucio'ed them until his anger was somewhat spent.

Then he ordered them - all of them - to get out of his sight. Had it been so long that they had forgotten how to truly obey, to truly serve? What a disastrous thought. If that were the case, what was he to do when the real work began? He only half noticed as the remaining Death Eaters disappeared around him, leaving him alone with Nagini in the center of the graveyard.

At least, he thought he was alone. One hooded figure remained, and was now slowly approaching the Dark Lord.

"What did I say? I do not want to see any of you, you disgust me, I-"

"Please, my Master, allow me a moment to speak with you. I have an offer I do not think you want to refuse," Came Icarus Novara's voice from beneath the hood. He lifted the black fabric and mask and faced his Lord and Master, eyes averted to the dead gray grass of the graveyard.

"Icarus," Voldemort snapped, glaring with half-lidded eyes. "Please, tell me why I shouldn't curse you where you stand?

"My most honorable Master, I took a wife not long after your absence. She was a full-blooded -" He paused, voice breaking pathetically over the word, "Siren."

"Not only a coward, but a blood-traitor, too," Voldemort replied. "If this was meant to sway my opinion, you have forgotten who I am."

Incredibly, Icarus smiled. He took out his wand and snapped it at the air before them.

A shadowy form, outlined in cobalt blue, slithered out of the end of the wand and settled on the ground between them. It was a young girl, perhaps Potter's age, staring up at the pair of them with large, questioning eyes.

"My daughter," said Icarus. "Iphany."

The Dark Lord froze, took a step back, looked up at his acolyte with a sneer.

"You mean to tempt me with some false creature? That is not real."

"I assure you, my Lord, she is very real. A child, still, but not for much longer," Icarus replied. He flicked his wand again and the Imago sharpened in focus, drawing closer to show the details of the girl's face.

"Few will believe the tales that Potter tells of this night, but the ones who do will take every caution to insulate him so that it does not happen again. If we send her to Hogwarts...allow her to lure the boy, to make him love her...there is nothing that will stop him from following her. I know from experience."

"And why, then, have you kept her away all this time?" Voldemort asked. His slitted red gaze still clung to the image before him. "If it was as easy as you say."

"For her protection," Icarus said. "Forgive me, sir, but you are transfixed by an Imago. Imagine if she was here before you."

The Dark Lord approached the shimmering mirage, knelt down and drew close to observe the girl, so close that he could see – perhaps even smell, touch, taste the tears rimming the corners of her eyes, slide his pale hands along the slender neck, mark the unblemished flesh with hands and teeth, hear the desperate, broken cries as she shattered beneath him –

"And what will keep her safe now?" He whispered.

"She can be taught to control," Icarus said. "I am immune to her presence, being that she is of my blood, but her mother–"

He paused long enough to draw Volemort's attention. A muscle clenched in Icarus' jaw. His hands were wound into iron coils. After a moment, he continued.

"Her mother was able to manage the better part of her allure. She could always silence a room with her presence, but she was able to temper it, make those who would desire her so afraid, so humbled, so intimidated by her light and beauty that they could not bring themselves to even meet her eyes. I believe Iphany can learn this as well, now that she is older. No man would dare to touch her unless she allowed it."

He joined the Dark Lord on the ground, kneeling before the vision of his daughter.

"Give me a year to allow her to learn. Let me send her to Hogwarts, as your faithful servant, to retrieve the boy for you. No one will suspect her. My name is good, my ties with the Ministry are strong. Take time to recover your glory, to find your supporters and punish those who have strayed. It would be the greatest honor of my life to offer my child to your service."

"And after?" Voldemort asked. "If she succeeds, if she brings the boy to me..."

"She will be yours, my Lord. Body and soul."


	9. Promise

"I know you're out there."

Night-black eyes above the waves, a flash of white skin and silver-blue hair. Alba was on watch tonight while her sisters dove for clams and oysters in the calmer waters off the western shore of the island. Only she had seen the exchange in the dining hall, only she had felt the girl's blunted thud of fear and pain. And now the man stood before her, staring blindly out at the ocean, his weak human vision searching for something he would not see unless it wished to be seen.

The Siren hovered uncertainly behind the jetty of rocks that lined the sea-ward edge of the cove. She slipped her hands across the stones and pulled herself up to better observe the man as he wore a nervous path through the sand and grass. Though she could not sense any violence or danger from him personally, a peripheral haze of some distant evil clung to his spirit. It was not his own, but someone else's, someone beyond the realm of normal human darkness. Someone deadly.

Someone powerful.

Otilde said that Ilia foresaw the girl delivering the most powerful human man to them for retribution. Was it his aura trailing behind Iphany's father? Otilde would simply watch and wait, Renali would not be able to control her desire to hurt him for what he had done to the little girl.

But she was Alba, the youngest daughter of the moon and the sea. It was she who best loved and pitied the earth-bound mortals, her descendants who most often fell in love with the men who pursued them. She would not wait and she would not retaliate. She would hear him, first, and deliver her judgement after.

She took a moment to center herself, to gather the cold music of her beauty and grace, groom and shape it until she gave out a regal, untouchable air. Changing the chords of her power worked best on men who knew, or at least believed in what she was. The magic-less people of Shallycob had too much invested in reality and not enough faith in the enigmas of the invisible world; the wizards who walked among them were more receptive to the subtleties of enchantment.

The man stumbled back as she climbed up and perched on the rocks, poised on her heels, ready to dive back into the turbulent arms of her mother should he try anything foolish. But he recovered himself and remained a good distance from her; close enough to hear his ragged breath, far enough to give her a good head start.

"You look different than she did," he said once he was a bit more used to her presence. The creature on the rocks was no less a goddess than the one he had loved, but her skin was more sand-gold than lunar white, hair a silver-violet prism rather than an ebony so deep it swallowed light and returned the lustre of midnight. The differences made it a bit easier to regard her, though he still felt the need to avert his eyes in acknowledgement of unworthiness.

It took a while for Alba's mouth to remember the taste and shape of the human language, so when she spoke it was slow and careful, tinged with the song of her native tongue.

"I was not her mother," she explained. "Why do you come?"

"I need Iphany to learn to control her power as you do," he replied. "To protect herself."

He spoke the truth, but not entirely. Alba canted her head, a simple gesture that demanded elaboration. The man swallowed and continued.

"She has a task on earth," he explained. "She will need to be among people – among men. I have kept her hidden, but cannot any longer. She must know how to keep herself safe."

"Who is task?" Alba asked. She knew the phrase wasn't quite right but the man seemed to take her meaning.

"It is for a very great wizard. The greatest, many would say. He needs her."

Alba stifled the spark of excitement and nodded.

"We can teach," she said. The man smiled, but on his mouth the expression held no hint of joy.

"Should I bring her to you?" He asked. "I...I fear she will not wish to return to this life once she knows there is another she could have."

"Let her sing," the Siren said. "She stopped, when you hurt her. Tell her to sing, when she swims at night. The song is the power, the song teaches us."

"Is there no other way?" He looked pained, and his hands twitched at his side as though longing to block out the mere memory of her music. Alba shook her head.

"She is Siren. Let her be Siren."

. . .

Alba relayed the exchange to her sisters when they returned, and Otilde could not stop praising the decision she'd made to speak to him.

"It is nothing but fate that saw you there tonight instead of us," she said. Her eyes shone with promise. "You did so well, little sister. I could not be more proud."

"You should have dragged him down and made you tell him the dark one's name," Renali grumbled. The hard pinch of Otilde's fingers on her side made her jump and let out a gusty sigh. "But Otilde is right, of course."

"I am glad he listened," Alba said, basking in the glow of her sisters' praise. "She would have not lasted much longer without the song. Locking her heart away is one thing, but denying her nature would have been fatal." She cut her eyes over at Otilde. "Do you think we can sing with her, some day?"

"If the man is not home, I think we can. But we will have to keep a distance. She is so willful, and so lonely, even if she cannot feel it. If we get too close she will want to join us and then all our suffering – all her suffering would be in vain," Otilde replied.

"We should sing for her tonight," Alba said. "I told the man to open the window while she sleeps."

They waited until the house was dark, waited until they could see drapes billowing out of the open windows of an uppermost room. Then they wove a song for their sleeping sister, a melody declaring safety, and peace, and love waiting like the promise of a not so distant dawn.


	10. Return

Iphany squared her wand and scowled at Madame.

"I want to do it," she said. Her small study, flush with cloud-muted morning light, was strewn with the organized dross of her lessons. A pile of parchment threatened collapse from the center of the red elm desk, and a charred-bottom cauldron by the window coughed up cloud after cloud of pungent-smelling vapor. Madame Adienne shook her head and moved to retrieve the cage.

"Want and can are not the same thing," Madame said. "I'll not subject another creature to your mistakes, it isn't fair, and it's cruel."

"So?" Iphany asked, rolling her shoulders in a shrug. "It's just a sparrow, there are thousands more where it came from. It doesn't matter."

Madame Avery gaped, horrified. "It matters to this one." She walked over to the window and opened it, then unlatched the birdcage and held it halfway out.

"Madame," Iphany said, coming around from behind the work table towards the older woman. She stuck her hand in her pocket and traced the outline of her wand. "Don't let it go."

"Iphany, if you want to give it a go with an earthworm or a whelk I won't stop you, but I'm not going to watch you disembowel this innocent thing." She shook the cage, trying to urge the bird out. It fluttered about the cage but couldn't seem to find the opening.

"Madame," Iphany said again, her tone more forceful. "Close that window and bring me that bird."

Madame narrowed her eyes and rattled the cage again.

"I am not a House Elf, Miss Novara, and if you don't watch yourself I'll be telling your father about this," she said. "Go on, you foolish thing, go!"

"Bother my father," Iphany said, then she snatched her wand from her pocket and pointed it at the cage. "Ornithicandere!"

The bird did not turn inside out, but it gave a a terrified screech before breaking apart into several hundred tiny feathered pieces. Madame screamed and dropped the cage.

"Why did you do that?" She shouted. Her face and hands were spattered with scarlet. Iphany put her wand back and backed away a few paces. She'd never seen Madame so angry before.

"If you wouldn't have been shaking it -"

"You will not," Madame interrupted, "Blame this on me. I told you not to do it. What is wrong with you, girl?" She drew out her own wand and passed it over her face and hands to dispel the blood.

"Poor little chap," she said softly as she performed another charm to gather up the feathers and bones and squishy red bits off the floor. Iphany sat down behind the table with a huff and kicked the slats of her wooden stool with her heels.

Bloody bird, she thought darkly, and then let out a quick burst of laughter at her own joke. Madame regarded her as though she'd sprouted tentacles and began gathering up her things and throwing them into her bag.

"Oh come on now, Madame, don't leave," she said. She hopped off the stool and snatched Madame's bag to prevent her from putting anything else inside. "I'm sorry, I just really wanted to get it right."

"The moment we put desire above suffering is the moment we start down a path with no discernible end," Madame said. She swished her wand at the bag and it dislodged himself from Iphany's arms. "If that is the path you wish to take, I am not equipped to teach you."

"I swear, I didn't mean it, I just really thought it would work this time," Iphany said. "Don't go, please." Don't leave me all alone again.

Madame paused, her books hovering above the large brocaded knapsack. She did not meet Iphany's eyes.

"When I was small, my father's owl disappeared. We waited for weeks for it to come back, and I even got the idea of putting up an add in the Prophet for a reward. My mum helped me with my spelling and wouldn't let me use my own pocket money to pay for it. He loved that owl, you see, and the owl loved him back. It wasn't something you'd see every day, that thing slept perched on the headboard of his bed and sat on his shoulder pretty as you please. The only one who wouldn't help was my little sister. She was just a baby then, probably five or six, so we didn't expect much from her. After a while Mum and I gave up thinking we'd find the owl, but my father did not. He kept searching. We moved houses a year later, and he left strict instructions with the next owners to contact him should they happen to see a large horned owl hanging about the house."

Iphany's mind was starting to drift towards other things, like whether or not she might take her swim early. She hadn't seen her father all day and his cloak was not on its customary hook in the marble tiled foyer, which usually indicated he'd be gone for a while. She wondered if -

"And when we went back to look, we saw it. It was alive, all right, but in this case it wasn't a cause for celebration. She did something to it, my sister. Kept it alive, but tortured it. Feathers all plucked out, beak clipped, naked wings nailed up to the wall behind the secret compartment in her closet. Told us she was just playing, just trying to learn, didn't think she was really hurting it, just wanted to see what would happen. It should not surprise you to learn that she was in Azkaban before she finished her sixth year at Hogwarts. Murdered a little boy, a first year."

Iphany stopped wondering about swimming and looked at Madame. Her eyes were dry, but she was trembling.

"Forgive me, then, if I am intolerant of just," she finished. Iphany could not quite find the words to respond.

"I'll need a day, Miss Novara. If you can give me your word that you will not harm another living thing again, I will continue to teach you." She zipped up her bag and Disapparated.

When she was gone Iphany retrieved the cage and sat it on the table in front of her. She counted each of the narrow silver bars, knocked the perch with a knuckle so it swung back and forth, opened and closed the door. A minuscule droplet of blood, missed by Madame's spell, stuck to one of the bars. When she looked closer she saw a tiny wisp of brown feather stuck to the spot.

She knew she was supposed to feel bad, and not in the objective sense of comparing her reaction to the someone normal. She knew that she, personally, was not the type to be indifferent to suffering. This kernel of truth, badly in need of sunlight and rain, lay buried in the soil of her mind, refusing to germinate past a few half-hearted sprouts. Everything she experienced was something that happened to her, a story played out in vivid dimensions, but not something she participated in. That was why it had felt so good to get angry at her father the night before; it nudged the seedling and lifted the veil for a moment or two, chasing after her heart til it beat a fast unruly rhythm on a white skin drum.

As much as she tried, she could not bring herself to care about the bird or the mouse or the fish that wound up scaled, yet still alive, when she'd tried to turn it into a crystal paperweight. Nor could she muster any concern for the fact that she didn't care. She didn't even care that she didn't care. This was no hidden urge to do harm because she could, it was an apathy beyond the capacity for reason.

After a bit she tucked a Potions book under her arm, planning to go up to her room and read until the sun slipped a few degrees lower in the afternoon sky. But when she opened the door and made to march into the hallway, she ran directly into her father with a surprised oof!

"Oh," she said, rubbing her shoulder where she'd banged into him. "It's you."

"I suppose it is," he replied. His lips twisted up in the hideous approximation of a smile. "Will you take tea with me?"

"I don't know," she said. "Are you going to try and murder me again?"

Icarus' mouth opened and closed for a few moments before he shook his head.

"No. I'm...no. I'm not going to try to murder you. I just want to talk."

She eyed him like someone who suspects their opponent is cheating at cards. Finally she nodded.

"Yeah, all right," she replied. "Let's talk."

. . .

A House Elf brought tea and petit fours to his study. Iphany was still marveling at the fact that he'd actually let her in. Even when he did not have guests it was locked. A grand old writing desk stood in an alcove flanked by windows at least four meters high, though the curtains were tightly drawn to avoid even the suggestion of outside light. The walls were deep, burnished red, pocked with strong-armed candelabras and portraits of her progenitors, stern features softened by the artist's folly. She'd once asked father why he had no portraits of her mother, and he'd told her that the painter they'd commissioned went mad after a week, obsessed with his inability to capture her face and his failure to achieve the right shade of blue to limn the starlit waves of hair. Last he heard, the man was still at St. Mungos and spent his days crying to himself and drawing blue-green eyes and long, slender fingers.

She sat in a low-backed chair by the hearth as her father circled the tea tray a few times, aimlessly adding milk and an ungodly amount of sugar to his tea. He sent Iphany's over with an absent wand-flick.

"You wanted to talk?" She asked when the silence began to pluck at her nerves. Her father cleared his throat and finally stopped violating his tea long enough to join her in the opposite chair.

"It has come to my attention that you do not sing when you swim," he said. "Please start this evening."

"Um...no," she replied. Of all the things she'd expected to hear from him, this one hadn't even made the imaginary list. "The last time you caught me doing that was deeply unpleasant. I would rather not repeat that encounter."

"I'm..." He took several long gulps of his tea, wincing as it went down. No wonder, it might as well have been pudding for everything he put in it. "I will not be here when you do. Just tell me the hours you plan to be in the cove and I will attend to business elsewhere until you are finished."

"Well it's different every night," she said, put out by the prospect of having to schedule the one thing that she did without restraint.

"If I am away, I will set up a Protean charm to allow you to alert me that you are...indisposed. You can use it to tell me when you begin and when you stop."

"But why?" Iphany asked. "What do you care if I sing or not?"

"I, ah...I did some reading recently. It's not good for your kind to deny that part of yourselves. Can weaken you to the point of death, or so I've read."

"Like you'd care," Iphany muttered. Her father stopped fussing with the pleats in his trousers and fixed her with a withering glare.

"You are my daughter, Iphany. I am the only person who cares if you live or die," he said. She swallowed her tea glared back.

"Fine," she replied. "Anything else?"

"Yes," he said. "I'll be sending you to Hogwarts next year."

. . .

She went to the cove at six, after tapping on her father's door (locked, again, but what else could she expect) to let him know she'd be starting soon. He did not reply, but she heard the pop of Disapparation and assumed he'd heard her.

For a while she swam silently as usual, alternating between diving down to the shallow bottom of the pond and floating on her back with her face to the moonless and starless sky. Heavy clouds reluctant to relieve themselves of rain moved along with a wind still chilled by the last gasp of winter. Summer in the Hebrides was summer in name alone; it was simply a time when it was slightly less wet and dreary.

The fuzziness at the back of her throat was there again, too, like it always was. She'd learned to ignore it over the last couple of years, though there were times it grew so irritating that it bordered on painful, especially when she swam. Tonight she would not ignore, she would indulge. A quick throb of fear struck the inside of her chest.

When she began it was very soft, just a reluctant hum buzzing out of her nose. As she continued the fear began to ebb, swallowed in incremental gulps by the hungry melody. It seemed a living thing, her song, a being not entirely tethered to the physical world, somehow managing to weave itself between the dark secret places that do not love the dawn.

She opened her mouth and let the creature free, pitching her voice up until it was snatched away by the breeze and carried off, presumably to give some unsuspecting soul a nightmare of grief and loss on the other side of the world. The song was thick with melancholy, but it needed something more, something to balance the headiness and lift the heart rather than drop-kick it repeatedly down a flight of stairs. Iphany closed her eyes and concentrated on the minute rumblings of her vocal chords, finding that suddenly her voice produced a second sound, weaving beneath the first in rich and elegant harmony. A listener would perceive two singers, puzzled by the fact that only one could be seen, and that all sound seemed to spring from her alone.

Well that is something, she thought. As she sang she continued to explore, finding that adding a third harmony was either not possible or beyond the current scope of her ability. Oddly the second voice seemed to behave of its own volition, hitting notes that she did not believe a human could hear, let alone reproduce.

In time she began to realize that the second voice did not belong to her at all. It came from her throat, yes, used the breath from her lungs for support, but it was not her own. She was the vessel through which the song met the world and nothing more.

And so she began to listen.


	11. Denial

Eleven months later...

. . . . .

"Why is it you're always skulking about in corners, Icarus?"

It was precisely the second time he'd hung back after the rest of them had been dismissed, but he had not stayed alive this long without learning when it was worth it to argue with the Dark Lord. (Never.) He nodded his contrition and cleared his throat.

"Iphany will be ready by the summer, my Lord. She has learned much in the months since I first made my offer, and I come tonight to assure you that Harry Potter is now living on borrowed time."

Voldemort scoffed and swept across the floor to stand before Icarus. The monstrous fire glazing the hearth-stones red outlined his towering form and made him look even less human than usual, if that were possible. He regarded Icarus like someone who has just discovered a shiny-winged beetle that they intend to watch for a bit before crushing it beneath a bootheel.

"Why do you feel the need to tell me this? You made a pledge to me. Pledges to me are not broken. I require no reassurance that you will hold up your end of the bargain."

"I know, my Lord. Your faith in me is both humbling and an honor beyond what I deserve," Icarus said. He centered himself, mentally rolling through his prepared speech for the hundredth time. Voldemort was no sympathizer with those who valued things like marriage and family and love. He must tread carefully, both to avoid being perceived as daring to manipulate his Master and to ensure that his request did not disturb his Master's distaste for emotional vulnerability. If Voldemort detected even a hint of human frailty, he'd either refuse on the spot or exploit the exposed weakness to some harsh and punishing end.

"When she succeeds – and I have no doubt that she will – I would ask a favor of you, My Lord. Not in recompense, of course, but at your mercy."

If the Dark Lord had eyebrows Icarus suspected that one of them would be lifted in an arch of suspicion. As it stood, the minute constriction of his scarlet eyes was the only indication of his displeasure. Voldemort liked granting favors from time to time, as it further ingratiated his servants to him and left them open to further coercion, should a recipient suddenly wane reticent over a command. Icarus took his silence as assent to continue.

"I recently learned more of the details of your incredible survival," he said. Lie number one; he'd known from the beginning, when nasty Pettigrew went scraping to each of them to beg assistance in bringing about his return. "I do not pretend to be so foolish as to think I might try and understand this power you possess-" Lie number two, he'd been researching the Dark Lord's apparent ascension from the gates of Death ever since it came to pass, to no real avail, "But I know that it required a keen understanding of the Dark Arts and a power that no other wizard before you has dared to dream of." That part was true. The next bit was the hardest to say with conviction, as the filth of the lie tore at the roots of his heart.

"I desire to raise my wife from the dead," he said, nonchalance laid on with a trowel. "I have known many women since then-" Lie number three, he had known none, "And nothing has ever quite compared to the pleasure I took from the S-...Siren. I would have her back here, my Lord, to do with as I wish. Her passing was unfortunate, for I had so many other things I wished to...ah...teach her." He let the words insinuate themselves, not bothering to force the implication behind them. The Dark Lord fluttered his fingers through the request and said,-

"Just have your Siren-spawn back, when I've finished with her. It's all the same."

Icarus kept still; he'd expected this response, trained himself not to react to it. But when faced with hearing the words out loud, an actual wave of burning bile rose as far as the center of his tongue. He smiled around the disgust and swallowed lightly.

"There are several problems with that, my Lord, the least of which is that being related to me dulls the majority of her attraction." It pained him to have to explain why incest was not, in fact, the same thing, but he knew such subtleties were lost on his Master. "Another is that unlike you, I am a man who does not possess the strength of will to resist the entrapment of a Siren. Even in death she holds sway over me, and I would have my revenge for that injustice."

"I see," said Voldemort. "Well, my infatuated little friend, I am afraid I cannot help you."

Icarus smiled. He'd expected this, too. Voldemort gave nothing away for free, even though his greatest weakness was his predilection for flattery. Icarus had that ready in droves, if needed, but knew this was a narrow needle to thread.

"My Lord, I am at your disposal. Whatever you need from me in exchange, you must only ask and you shall receive it."

" I do not doubt that I shall, but I tell you that I cannot give you what you seek, at least not in the way you require. I could fashion a body, certainly, use your memories to shape it, use a variety of spells to give it the appearance of life. But if you merely wanted a warm puppet, I should think your daughter would suffice. I survived because I took measures to ensure I would never entirely depart this world, not because I have the power to bring souls back from the dead. You'll have to take your revenge and pleasure elsewhere."

The song took roost in the back of Icarus' mind, spread its wings, and started to whisper. It was a familiar refrain, rising from an early and undeserved grave, interred beneath the mounting hope that had been building these last months, ever since the Dark Lord's return. Dead, but alive. Destroyed, but reborn. The power existed, it had to. His mouth was dry and sour, his vision dipped now and again into an alarming shade of gray.

"Thank you for hearing me, Master. I shall keep you apprised of my daughter's progress at Hogwarts."

His own collected, reverent voice glanced and rebounded off the grating roar of the song in his ears. It was the last thing he remembered before waking up in Azkaban.

. . . .

Coralynn was late. This would not have been so bad if the event to which she was tardy was anything other than Great-great Aunt Ermina's ninety fifth birthday party. Aunt Ermina would no doubt call her out for being the last to arrive, her tongue still sharp enough to draw blood. Ermina was Shallycob's eldest citizen, which meant that she had the right to say whatever she damn well pleased to whomever she damn well pleased. Coralynn knew she was supposed to be respectful and reverent to the town matriarch, but sometimes she wondered why the old biddy couldn't just kick the bucket and be done with it.

She had just turned on to Breadalbane street when she broke into a half- jog, her shadow stretched long and chasing her from streetlamp to streetlamp. It was a cool evening in infant summer, and the stars winked sleepily above her in a deepening black sky.

Coralynn wasn't paying much attention to her surroundings, as her initial and most prevalent thought was to get to the party as quickly as possible. Several blocks ahead she would see the orange glow of a bonfire burning in Ermina's back yard. Faint sounds of revelry reached her ears, and she could not help a smile. Perhaps -

And then - right in front of her!-there was a very tall man swathed in gray shadow. Coralynn let out an screech and skidded to a halt.

"Hullo," she said, winded from her run and miffed at the sudden startling. The man, who was dressed rather oddly (a cape? In April? ) shifted at the sound of her voice. He stepped forward into the light, and she had two thoughts in rapid succession: he was entirely too handsome to be real, and the look in his eyes was nothing short of terrifying.

She stumbled back , repulsed by the sight of those eyes, black and blameless as two bits of smudgy coal, devoid of anything resembling humanity.

Coralynn did not register that he had reached inside the folds of his cloak and had taken two dashing steps down the street when she heard him mutter a word that was not a word, cru-

Icarus watched as the girl pitched forward onto her knees, mouth agape as the Cruciatus fell upon her body. He wielded his wand lightly, refreshing the curse with wrist-snaps as though he were cracking a whip. She started to scream; that wouldn't do at all. It was the center of town, it was barely dark, people would -

"Hey, what's goin' on out there?"

The muggle trotted down the steps of the shop and swore, shocked to stillness by the man's strange appearance, his wordless malice, and the sight of old Ermina's niece writhing in agony on the cobblestones. He lunged for the stranger but his arms passed through thin air; belatedly he heard the unnatural cracking sound and realized both the man and the girl had vanished into the night.

. . . .

Iphany returned from her swim that evening to find both doors of her father's study flung wide open, but no light or fire coming from within. She passed her hand over her hair to wick away the seawater and summoned her robe from the hook by the stairs, not wanting to be caught looking, well, like a Siren if her father was indeed at home.

The room was empty and cold, with not a quill out of place to indicate any presence other than her own. The only odd thing (besides the fact that the doors were open in the first place) was that the drapes were parted to admit the glow of a waning moon.

She took out her wand, intending to send them closed. It had to be that the house Elves were cleaning and had gotten distracted, despite the fact that it had never happened before. She'd shut the drapes and the doors and carry on with her evening, and deal with Blat's negligence in the morning.

But a small, pitiful noise caught her ear, so faint she might have imagined it, if she didn't trust her own hearing so completely. Her senses were always deliciously heightened for a too-brief hour following her swim, so much so that if she wanted to she could focus on the town some three or four kilometers away and pick out the buzz of conversation from the nearest pub. This was real and much closer, coming, she thought, from behind the divan that stretched in languid green suede before the open windows.

"Hello?" She called. A small, sharp gasp, a rustle of movement. She pointed her wand and felt the muscles between her shoulders contract. "Who is that? Who's there?"

"Please," came the voice, well-known if it weren't so frail.

"Daddy?" She called. "What are you doing back there? Are you ill?"

"Please," he said again. "Oh, God, please make it stop."

Iphany skipped forward several steps until she could see behind the sofa, could see her father, disheveled, empty-eyed, his face a matted mess of blood and tears. He let out another sob when he saw her, pulling himself up to stand.

"You have to kill me, you have to kill me," he said. "I cannot bear it any longer. I tried to make it stop, I thought if I could touch...could...but it just got louder and louder and now..."

Iphany was not looking at him, nor was she listening. Her eyes were fixed on the body, crumpled up on the rug like a sad old dress. It was a naked young woman with dark auburn hair and freckled skin that was probably lovely when not half flayed. Her legs were wrenched open, eyes still glazed with shock, mouth unhinged in a wordless death-scream.

"Daddy..." Iphany whispered. "What did you do?"


	12. Rise

Author's Note:

Okay, he's finally arrived. I do hope everyone is enjoying themselves, and if you are I would love to hear it! Reviews give me life. I'll take praise, criticism, chocolates and Slytherins, in no particular order. Onward!

. . . . .

"Stupefy!"

Iphany lowered her wand and sucked in a breath through her teeth. Icarus slumped over the back of the divan, his bloody fingers brushing the gold silk fringe of a now-ruined pillow.

Honestly, she thought, he just had to bring her back to the house.

First she made sure the girl was well and truly dead. No pulse fluttered at the throat, which was already going purple with a necklace of bruises. Iphany kicked the dark memory back down to the cellar where it belonged.

Then she began to methodically heal the scrapes and contusions, knowing that the only reason the spells still worked was because the girl hadn't been gone very long. Once the blood stagnated and turned cold, there was no amount of magic that could erase the damage. She was able to remove most of the blood, return the skin to its original color, knit the severed skin beneath the soft ridge of her mouth, where in her agony the girl had bitten through her own lip.

The flayed ribbons wrapping the girls upper arms and left thigh were not so cooperative. She could not get the skin to grow back together, nor could she Transfigure the exposed muscle to appear whole. While at this point it wouldn't matter if she turned the girl inside out or exploded her, she was, or had been, a living creature, impervious to Iphany's meagre Transfiguration talents.

Why am I going through all this trouble? She wondered. Why did she care if her father saw punishment for his crime? She could not find the answer, nor did she have enough time to give it the consideration it deserved. She tried a few more charms to get rid of the last wounds, but it was too late now, the blood ran cold.

So much for dousing her with whiskey and dumping her behind the pub, she thought. Now what?

A dozen Aurors in bottle-green robes bursting through her father's study in a violent cacophony of light and noise, that's what. Iphany had about five seconds to summon a thimbleful of tears to gather in her eyes and run sobbing towards the nearest – oh, not him – female in the group.

"I just came in and he was standing over her and I panicked and stunned him I don't know what happened," she wailed, and if the last word was tinged with a whisper of music that carried a strong suggestion of believing everything that came out of her mouth, well, she didn't know anything about that, did she?

"Shhh, shh, you're all right, love," said the woman into whose arms she had flung herself. "You're safe now."

Not likely, Iphany thought, glancing briefly over the woman's soft round shoulder to see several of the men gawking at her with open mouths. This was not at all how she had imagined her first encounter with the wider world. She hiccuped and buried her face in the woman's neck.

"She hysterical," someone said. The arms that held her shifted, one of them loosened its hold on her back and retrieved an unseen item.

"Here, darling, this will help," she said. Something cool and faintly sweet touched Iphany's lips, and then she knew no more.

. . .

"Iphany?"

The voice came from underwater, a beam of sunlight pricking her conscience. She shook her head and then heard the voice again, more insistent this time.

"No." Iphany said aloud, rolling over to press her face to the cool pillow. Everything was fine, if they'd just -

She shrieked and thrashed when she felt the hand on her shoulder, popped from under the coverlet and scrambled towards the far corner of the bed. The familiar blue walls of her bedroom swam into focus, followed by the calm-faced woman sitting in a chair at the beside. Her sleep-addled brain struggled over the confusing scraps of information that bounced around in her memory, denying her attempts to force them back together.

"Who are you?" She asked. Her throat felt rough and hot, her limbs flush with shivers. How long had she been asleep? A night and a day, at least. Waves of moon-sickness rolled over her shoulders and tossed her stomach into knots.

"My name is Sapir McElroy," the woman replied. "Do you need something to drink?"

"I need to swim," Iphany replied. Her head began to pound. "Right now."

"Oh..." said the woman, looking confused, then, "Oh. Of course. You're...yes, sorry. Can I help you outside?"

"I am afraid you must," Iphany hissed through gritted teeth. Whatever they had given her could have very well killed her if she'd been unconscious another day or two. Bloody Auror idiots.

Aurors, she thought. Uh oh. The memory of their appearance – and her father's crime, began to take shape. But she could not hold on to it, not until she had remedied the source of the nausea and pain battling for control of her body. She let the woman escort her outside, barely noticing the other green-robed witch at the front door, not hearing the low exchange of words that passed between them. Dusk was just beginning to settle a dark blue arm across the horizon, but she did not have time to wait until the moon appeared. She struggled out of the woman's grasp once the cove was in sight, and let out a sigh as soon as she felt the invigorating glide of the water over her skin.

Iphany shed her robe as she waded, ducked beneath the surface and drew in gasps of water that she both allowed to filter through her gills and swallowed in enormous gulps. She swam long enough for the moon to appear, but by then she had regained the better part of her faculties and decided that she would not sing. She did not trust the woman on the shore, with her small blue eyes and unnervingly placid face, a detail of intuition that had escaped her in her previous state.

After an hour she climbed up the rocks and laid herself out for a few minutes, allowing the cold silver glow of the moon to soak into the water still clinging to her skin. When she felt she had absorbed enough of the light to feel normal again, she made her way back to the woman, who was holding out her dry robes, her eyes averted to a scrub of sea grass at her feet.

"Feeling better?" she asked. Iphany slipped the robe on and nodded.

"Yes," she said, then belatedly: "Thank you."

"I've had your Elf prepare some dinner, I'm sure you're hungry," Sapir said. She escorted Iphany back up to her room and sat in silence as she sipped the seafood broth and nibbled carefully at the herb-dusted roll still warm from the oven. When her stomach declared its intention to lie quietly and accept the food, she sat back and regarded the woman.

"My father killed someone," she said. "Was it a muggle?"

Sapir flinched and nodded. Iphany caught the reaction and considered it; she supposed the words had come out too emotionless and cold. She consulted her memory of Madame's sad, haunted eyes when she'd told her the story about the owl, how the memory seemed to play before her like an invisible photograph. She tried to picture her father standing over the ruined body of the girl and felt nothing, but managed to work her mouth into a subtle pout and knit her brows together in what she hoped was an expression of pain.

"A girl from the village, yes. The two of you are the only magic users on the island, so when the ISS committee got wind of someone performing an Unforgivable curse in the vicinity, we were dispatched to investigate. Word in the muggle town was that someone saw a man in gray assault the young woman and then disappear into thin air. I'm sorry, dear, is this bothering you?" She asked.

Iphany had been thinking about how stupid her father was, to break the rules with such obvious disregard. Her face must have contorted in disgust.

"Yes," she said. Sapir nodded and reached out to pat her arm sympathetically. It was all Iphany could do not to cringe away from the gentle touch.

"What happens to me now?" She asked. "He's in Azkaban, I assume."

"Yes," said Sapir. "As for you, well, it's complicated. In the end, it is up to you. We know you were slated to matriculate at Hogwarts in the fall, but that's a good four months from now. You cannot remain here by yourself, being under-age. It is written in your father's will that your Godparents are Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, but we have secured you a place at the London Centre for Displaced Young Witches and Wizards. We feel it would be a better environment for someone who has experienced -"

"An orphanage?" Iphany asked. "You must be mad. I'd rather join my father in Azkaban. A bunch of sticky Mudbloods pawing all over my nice things, and where would I swim, how would I sing? No, thank you. Though I have never met the Malfoys I am certain anything would be preferable to that."

Sapir sat back, looking both stunned and vindicated, as though something she suspected was in the process of being proven. Both of her parents were Muggles, and she'd had more than one dealing with the Malfoys, who respected her authority as an Auror about as much as they respected the autonomy of house Elves. Upon discovering their connection to the girl, she had done her best to give the benefit of the doubt. A futile exercise, so it seemed.

Sapir rose from her seat and dusted her clean hands on her robe.

"As you wish, Miss Novara. I suggest you take this evening to gather your things and ready yourself for a morning departure. I will inform the Malfoys of your arrival."

Iphany knew she had failed some sort of test, but did not care enough to wonder what it was. She finished her dinner as Sapir took her leave, and began the task of packing up her life to begin a new one.

. . .

Once she had all of her things stacked in neat piles next to the fireplace in her room, Iphany went down to her fathers' study. The curtains were still open, and a fire popped and crackled in the hearth, driving out some of the dampness. She sat down at his desk and began opening drawers, searching for something she had seen only once.

She found her quarry easily, tucked into a small oak-carved chest at the back of a drawer. Inside lay several pendants, each a razor-thin slice of blue-white stone that knew no equal in this mortal world. Her mother's necklace, excised and shaped to confer its wards to several wearers at once, protection from her own untested powers. Each was labeled with a different name – Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore, Flitwick, Flich – and Draco and Lucius Malfoy. These last two she extracted, then wrapped and bound in red silk. She went to the window and opened it to summon Diablo, her father's black owl.

As an afterthought, she took out a piece of parchment and scratched out a quick note to the recipients.

By now you will have heard of my impending arrival. My father had these made for you, apparently he believed that this day might one day come. Please wear them always,

Iphany Novara

She signed her name with a customary flourish and tied the package to Diablo's leg. He blinked his big silver eyes and took wing, nipping at her shoulder with a soft hoot before sailing out into the night.

She sat in the study for a long time, watching the clouds ride the arc of the sky. Her father had given her enough information about her task at Hogwarts, her service to his Master. She did not know what was meant to come afterwards because he had not told her. But the mission lined up well with the long-ago dream of her mother, and the words she had said to her:

One day, you will bring us the most powerful human man, and we will have justice.

She had a part to play in whatever journey the fates were weaving, and it was a path she would follow. It had not yet occurred to her that the way had been chosen for her, that she had no voice in the matter, no will of her own. Only the dreams of others drove her, lent her purpose, compelled her feet to move and body to comply. She did not yet know that her mind and body were her own.

But soon, she would find out.

. . .

"Malfoy Manor!"

Whirling, verdant green, a rushing like wind in her ears, and suddenly Iphany felt herself pitching forward. She landed on her knees on hard, unyielding stone. As she regained her senses she struggled up, finding herself face to face with not one, but two extraordinarily ugly house Elves.

"Mistress Iphany!" Blat cried, clapping her hands to the sides of her face. "Is you alright? You is not hurt? I will -"

"Shut up." She spat, rubbing at her knee with one hand. The second Elf was a good bit larger than Blat, but it possessed the same irritatingly nervous manner. He wrung his knobbly hands together and began speaking very quickly.

"We is so pleased you is arriving, Mistress Iphany Novara. I is going to tell my Master you is here, he is waiting for you downstairs, Mistress Iphany. I-"

"Well, go on then," Iphany interrupted, glancing about to get her initial look at the room. The ceilings were shy of fifteen feet high, beamed across with polished oak. Green and white silk draperies hung from the rafters, a precursor to matching décor. Plush couches in the same shades of emerald and ivory flanked the fireplace, and on either side of the room hung huge sneering portraits of the Lord and Lady of the Manor.

While Iphany was examining the room, Blat had wandered to the large marble tea-table and was fiddling with a china bowl carved of hundreds of entwining green snakes. Iphany turned in time to see her lift the bowl from the table and inspect it with appraising, stupid eyes. She felt her Mistress' gaze upon her and looked up, gasping as she set the bowl down.

But she missed by a good two inches. The bowl clattered to the floor; fortunately it did not shatter, but Iphany shouted all the same.

"Damn you, Blat," She said, darting forward to seize the Elf by her ear. "If that had broken, don't think I wouldn't have snapped your fingers." Blat shuddered and whimpered, begging forgiveness while driving her own balled fist into the side of her head. Iphany let go of the Elf and drew a breath to unleash another tirade, but was stopped by a shadow and a voice from the door.

"Welcome, Miss Novara," came the rich and shivering baritone, "To Malfoy Manor."


	13. Contralto

Note:

A brief reminder again that this story is only canon-compliant up to GOF. I started it after GOF came out, so while there may be some updated references that jive with 5-6-7 for the most part it continues where GOF left off. (Personally I never much cared for the prophecy aspect of OOTP; Voldemort never got a chance to hear the rest anyway. And I didn't want to try and factor in Lucius having been to Azkaban in this rewrite as I feel like the humiliation he experienced and the disappointment that Voldemort had drove the Malfoys' plot further in 6&7, which doesn't really serve any purpose for me in this story.)

Also, I said that any old fans of the story would not find anything too different here. I am a liar.

Big thanks to zara_skye for my first review! It means the world to me!

Thanks to my Horcrux Shasha for proofing this chapter.

. . . .

When Iphany stepped through the fireplace and vanished in a swirl of green flame, the image reflected in the large silver-black pearl flickered and faded. Otilde released it and looked to her sisters.

"That's it, then," she said. The house on the hill was dark; no heartbeats sounded within the empty halls: his broken and vague, hers a brilliant, delirious tattoo.

"Do you think she is ready?" asked Alba. She rested her chin on Otilde's shoulder and wrapped her arms around her sister's waist.

"Of course she isn't," said Renali. "But it doesn't matter now."

"I do wish we could communicate with her," Otilde sighed. "The only way would be if Ilia's enchantment fails, and if that happens we will have far greater things to worry about. She learned as much as she could while she was here, and she will continue to learn—as long as she doesn't stop singing again. She may even begin to develop Ilia's gift of sight."

"But we won't know she succeeded..."

"Until she brings the dark one here," Otilde confirmed. "I still see her returning to us. Nothing has changed."

"I miss her already," said Alba. "Her sweet little voice..."

Even Renali nodded at that. As much as Iphany was a child of Otilde's lineage, Renali saw much of herself in the girl. She was determined and loyal, even to the father who had betrayed her over and over again. When—if—Otilde's visions proved true, Renali knew she would love to get to know her beyond the echo of her spirit-song whispering over the waters of the cove. Despite her doubts, Renali wanted to believe they would all be reunited; wanted it more, perhaps, than the revenge that weighed down every thought and dream in her mind.

"Waiting is not in my nature," she said. "Isn't there anything we can do?" The suggestion in her voice was as subtle as a knife wound. Otilde turned to face her, noting the gleam in Renali's eyes.

"We don't even know where she's gone," said Alba. "And besides, it's been at least a hundred years since we tried shifting. The power could be waning, it could be gone."

"It could be," said Renali, lips turned up in a secretive smile. "But perhaps it isn't."

. . . .

Iphany released Blat's ear and cut her eyes over to the man standing at the threshold of the hearth-room. Another figure hovered behind him, smaller and slighter, obscured but for the cut and flare of a feminine-looking set of robes. She glanced down at her own attire—a plain, nondescript knee-length robe in soft dove-gray, smeared liberally with soot and ash from the fireplace. Her white stockings were in even worse shape.

Blat, for all her bumbling ineptitude, also noticed her mistress's disarray and snapped her fingers; the smudges and streaks disappeared, and Iphany felt her hair tug in a few spots as it reshaped itself into a neat braid down her back. In the dozen or so steps it took for Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy to approach her, she allowed herself to sink down into the song that scored her waking thoughts. The default melody, as she had come to know it, was the aria of her spirit: staccato notes beating solemn and cold, a trill of anger in pianissimo, the harmonic dissonance of humor skewing dark on most occasions. Beneath that ran the supportive current of her Siren blood-song; irresistible, alluring, inescapable. It was these chords that she focused on, softening the husky resonance until it was a distant echo. The song had taught her much about herself, had bid her to practice this control. Now she would find out if it really worked.

"Lord and Lady Malfoy," she said, dipping a half-curtsey. "Thank you for taking me into your home."

"Anything for the daughter of an old friend," said Lucius. "I am sorry to hear about his...incident."

Iphany could not tell if the smirk that touched the warm curve of his mouth was mocking or commiserative, but his choice of words informed her exactly how he felt about her father torturing and murdering a Muggle. She kept her face even and turned her gaze to Narcissa. The woman was beautiful, with the same pale gold hair and complexion as her husband's. They might have been related, for how much they looked alike. However, Narcissa regarded her with a cool, even stare, and Lucius seemed to be searching her face for something he had not realized he was missing. Iphany drew herself up under the weight of those aristocratic eyes and tried to smile.

"He was foolish, I am still unsure what came over him," she said. "But it doesn't matter now. I intend to impose on your hospitality as little as possible. I am used to being alone, so if you wish to pretend I am not here, it will cause me no injury."

Yuck, she mused, Why am I talking like this? Probably because they both look like they fell out of the family tree and hit every royal branch on the way down. She would be glad if they left her alone, but a surprising thorn of longing scraped against the edge of the thought. Lonely, sighed the errant refrain. Narcissa's eyes softened, as though she had heard the truth beneath her formal words.

"Nonsense," said Lucius. "We are your godparents. To treat you as anything less than one of our own would be beyond our capacity to allow." He extended his hand to her. She shook her head and, without thinking, took several steps back.

"I shouldn't," she said, and when Lucius raised his dark brows and the softness fled from Narcissa's eyes, she continued. "I don't mean to offend. I do not like to be touched." That sounded much better than repeating her fathers' warnings against the dangers of allowing any man within a yard of her. Lucius dropped his hand and inclined his head.

"My apologies," he said. "Shall I give you a tour?"

As unpracticed as she was at reading the facial expressions of strangers, Iphany could sense some hesitance in his offer. She shook her head and in her periphery saw Narcissa's shoulders drop a few centimeters.

She doesn't want me alone with him, Iphany surmised.

"No, sir. Thank you. If the elves could just show me to my room, I'd like to get settled in. I don't suppose there is any water on the grounds?"

"There wasn't," said Naricissa. "We've charmed a pond near the back of the property." She forced a smile that did not appear overly friendly. "I've been after Lucius for years to add it, and I suppose I just needed to borrow a Siren to make it finally happen."

A rush of annoyance lit Iphany's nerves. She decided right then that she would be turning the majority of her attention on the Malfoy matriarch; if anyone had the power to make her stay unpleasant, it wouldn't be Lucius or Draco. Speaking of...Iphany started to ask after the whereabouts of the youngest Malfoy, but thought better of it.

"However it came about, I appreciate it," she said. She watched as Blat popped in and out of the parlor, taking a trunk or a suitcase with her at each disappearance. When the last of her luggage was gone, Iphany motioned for the elf to come to her.

"I'll just go up now, if it's all right," she said. Being in a room with two whole people at once made her feel like someone had taken hold of either of her hands and was pulling her as hard as they could in opposite directions. She wanted to stay; she wanted to ask Narcissa where she'd gotten than beautiful robe, she wanted to tell Lucius she liked the shape of the hearth and the color of the sofas, she wanted to run up the stairs and lock her door and never come out.

"Of course," said Lady Malfoy. She sounded relieved.

"But you'll join us for dinner," said Lucius.

"I—yes," she said. Iphany was about to argue when she realized it wasn't a request.

She caught his eyes and then looked away, feeling a strange warmth creeping up the back of her neck. "I'd be delighted."

. . . .

"You were rude," said Lucius as soon as the girl's footsteps faded. He rounded on his wife and fixed her with a withering glare.

"When have you ever cared about that?" Narcissa replied.

"When my Master is concerned, I care about everything. 'How was your time with the Malfoys, Iphany? Oh, rather awful. Narcissa treated me like I was a muggle in Knockturn Alley.' I'm sure he'll be willing to overlook any unkindness she reports. And when he asks you why, what will you say? You were jealous? You thought she was going to steal your son? Your husband? What will he do to us, Narcissa?"

Narcissa narrowed her eyes and glanced over Lucius' shoulder at a spot on the wall. He grabbed her chin with a gloved hand and forced her eyes to meet his.

"You will be pleasant and accommodating," he said. "Treat that girl like the daughter you always wanted, or so help me—"

"You'll what?" Narcissa pulled her face away and took a step back. Lucius could see the storm brewing in her face and found himself wishing, not for the first time, that his wife was as committed to the Dark Lord's service as he was. She did not understand; she never had. A Malfoy always chooses the winning side, he'd told her. Her argument that it had not worked out so well for them last time earned her a backhand that shocked more than it hurt.

"It is not my reaction that you need to worry about," Lucius said, noting that she flinched when he spoke, expecting or remembering the blow. But the weight of his words was enough to scatter the clouds of anger in her eyes. She twisted her mouth into a sardonic smile and gave a mocking curtsey.

"As you wish, Lord Husband."

. . . .

Iphany let out a long-held sigh. She flung herself onto the king-sized bed draped in tongues of lavender and cream. The room was much larger than her own at home—lavishly decorated, bearing floors of gleaming ivory marble instead of wood. A full balcony offered a spectacular view of the grounds. Iphany glanced out the window and flinched. How strange it was to see gently rolling hills and sculpted gardens instead of luminous sand and cobalt waves!

She crawled off the bed and approached the glass, pressing her palm against the smooth, sun-warmed surface. Across the hills, behind a shaded copse of trees, she could just make out the glint of water. From what she could tell, it appeared to be roughly half the size of her cove. As long as there was privacy, it would suffice. Her skin was already itching for the feel of water, but the fear of encountering one of the Malfoys after an outdoor swim squashed that thought before it could go much farther. A bath, then.

The bathroom, like the sleeping chamber, did not disappoint. A stone bathing pool, large enough for several teenage Sirens, was sunk into the center of the room beneath a large skylight that let in plenty of sunshine. She still did not care much for daytime, but had to admit that the aesthetics of the marble room, with its large armoire full of soft, cedar scented towels and gorgeous collection of colorful glass-bottled washing potions, was greatly enhanced by the golden glow of afternoon.

She spent the better part of two hours lazing in the tub. The bath energized her in the same manner that a nap would a normal person, so when she lifted herself grudgingly from the steaming vat of rose-scented water, she felt measurably better than she had in the last twenty four hours. Blat presented a soft gray robe and a towel to wrap her hair, after waving away the water that dripped and puddled at her feet.

She ventured back into the bedroom, humming to herself. While Blat rummaged around in her trunk for a change of clothes, Iphany noticed the vanity in the corner of the room and decided to sit down and look through the drawers.

She glanced up at her reflection - and gasped when the gilt-edged mirror burst into sobs. At first she wasn't sure where the awful noise was coming from, but quickly ascertained its origin upon noticing that the glass itself was trembling. What she did not know was that her mother ensured every wizard-enchanted mirror in the Novara Estate was replaced with normal glass for this very reason. The disembodied voice wailed on and on in an ear shattering keen until Iphany draped one of her winter robes over the frame.

The entire incident terrified Blat, who thought it was Iphany who was crying, so she started to howl at the top of her lungs and would not stop until Iphany took her by the shoulders and shook her.

"It wasn't me, Blat," she shouted over the elf. "It was that stupid mirror!"

"Oh Mistress Iphany Novara, Blat was so worried," the elf said through a bout of hiccups.

"Well stop that," said Iphany. "I'm fine, see? Everything's all right."

She paused, frowning, and looked down at the elf, whose wonky little face was streaked with tears and relief. She felt...odd. Like she cared if Blat was upset or not, cared beyond the aggravation it caused. Alarmed, she backed away and pointed at the door.

"Go...um...go find those Malfoy men and make sure they're wearing their amulets," she said. Blat blew her nose noisily on her dingy brown shift and nodded.

. . . .

By the time Blat returned it was nearly nightfall. Iphany ushered her in with a wave of her hand and an exasperated what took you so long. She was trying to decide between two new robes: a blood-red ensemble with black lace filigree and a gentler, more casual affair in foamy, pale jade. She had never seen either of them before but assumed they were

Blat's doing, at her father's request. Perhaps she was meant to save them for...Him.

"Which one?" she asked, shoving that thought aside. Blat eyed them both and motioned to the green one.

"This one, Mistress, it is the same color as your eyes."

Iphany shrugged and slipped out of her bathrobe, allowing Blat to help her with the complicated laces at the back of the dress. She held out her arm and examined the long, bell-shaped sleeves. Small diamonds rimmed the interior fabric, and they caught the light of the westering sun as she turned her arm this way and that.

"Are you sure? This seems awfully fancy." The only time she dressed up for dinner at home was when her father requested her presence, and even then it was only in black or gray. He did not like when she wore anything else.

"Wizard families like the Malfoys always dress up for dinner," said the elf. "Blat remembers when Mistress Iphany Novara's mother was still alive, and she wore these robes many times."

Iphany stilled and placed her hands on the fitted bodice.

"These...were my mother's?"

Blat peered from around the side of Iphany's leg and gave a hopeful, trembling smile.

"Master Novara told Blat to get rid of them. Blat put them up in the attic instead. Blat had to slam her toes in the door seven times to make up for it, but Blat knew that one day Mistress Iphany would want to wear them."

Iphany swallowed around the hard, hollow ache in her throat. She wished she had a mirror. There was a part of her that wanted to rip the robes and stuff them back into the trunk. The part of her that wanted to sew them to her skin and never take them off was much larger.

"Well done," she said. It was several minutes before she could get Blat to stop whimpering her gratitude into the hem of the fabric, but she was finally interrupted by a soft knock at the door.

"Mistress Iphany Novara," came a squeaking voice, "It is time to come down to dinner."

"You stay here and see about replacing that awful mirror," Iphany told her elf. The last thing she needed was something mooning over her while she tried to suffer through what would surely be an awkward affair. She quickly removed the velvet tie holding her braid in place and shook her hair out until it fell in loose, tumbling waves around her shoulders. The elf knocked again.

"I'm coming," She shouted back. She stepped into the flat green slippers that Blat laid out and opened the door.

"Yanna is sorry to be bothering you, Mistress, but Lord Malfoy doesn't like to be kept waiting," said the elf when Iphany stepped out into the hallway.

"Lord Malfoy and my father have that in common," she replied. A flutter of nervousness tickled her belly. "Let's go."


	14. Ensemble

LOVE THE REVIEWS. Keep them coming, they give me life!

. . . .

There was nothing of warmth or welcome in the Malfoy family dining hall. Despite the fire in the hearth and the impressive iron chandeliers that hung over the long, ebony wood table, every gothic carving and fixture seemed designed to absorb light rather than be revealed by it. Iphany winced at the improbable echo of her flat-heeled slippers on the polished floor, and was glad when she reached the relative padding of the Oriental rug.

"Kind of you to join us, Miss Novara," Lucius drawled. He rose from his seat and must have kicked the leg of Draco's chair as he passed behind it. The younger Malfoy scrambled up, his narrow face a mask of incredulity. Iphany met his eyes and he looked away at once, blanching pale and wide-eyed. Narcissa remained seated, one hand in her lap while the other clutched the stem of a pewter and crystal wine goblet.

"Thank you again for inviting me," Iphany said, her voice coming out far less strong and assured than she hoped. Lucius pulled out a chair next to Narcissa and bid her to take a seat. She complied, thanking him as he slid her chair closer to the table. He resumed his place at the head and snapped his attention to Draco.

"Draco," Lucius barked. "Where are your manners?" There was a hint of amusement in his voice.

"Hey," Draco said. He looked up at her again, shuddered, and smiled.

"Hey," Iphany replied. She returned his awkward grimace as Lucius dropped his forehead into his palm with an irritated sigh.

"Close your mouth, Draco," said Narcissa. She still had not looked up from her plate. Desperate to alleviate the weight of her own presence, Iphany turned to the woman and cleared her throat.

"You have such a lovely home, Lady Malfoy. My room is exquisite, and the view of the grounds is wonderful. I think I'll be quite comfortable here."

"Oh, good," said Narcissa. "Yanna, serve the first course, please."

The elf scurried out of the corner and tapped his fingers on the table. Iphany looked down to see her soup-bowl fill with a rich red broth dotted with vegetable and – uh oh. She disguised her gag as a polite cough into her napkin as the scent of stewed lamb assaulted her nose. She and meat had never gotten along. Her father had tried to force the issue when she was smaller, ignoring his own first-hand knowledge of her mother's intolerance for anything warm-blooded. After a while he gave up and kept his own diet while catering to her preference for vegetables and seafood. Of course nobody had bothered to pass that piece of information along.

Or perhaps they had. Iphany reached for the roll on her bread plate and caught a glimpse of Narcissa watching her from the corner of her eye.

I'm not after anyone! She wanted to shout, feeling the burn of anger start to simmer in her chest. Not only that, but she was starving. She finished the roll in three impolite bites and steeled herself to try the soup, just to prove that she could. But when the spoon approached her mouth and the smell hit her anew, her fingers released it of their own accord. The resulting crash of silver on china and the splash of crimson broth fetched everyone's attention.

"Is our fare not up to your standards, Iphany?" Lucius had the gall to look offended, even though Iphany was well aware he probably did not even know where his kitchen was. She shook her head.

"It isn't that, sir. I don't—I can't eat meat. I'm sorry, I should have said something sooner, or had my elf tell yours."

"Yanna," said Lucius. "Did you not think to inquire as to Miss Novara's dietary restrictions?" He seemed colossally annoyed by the entire affair. Iphany was about to defend the elf, but the incongruity of caring was alarming enough to keep the words behind her teeth.

"Blat told Yanna, sir, and Yanna asked Mistress Narcissa if he should change the soup, but Mistress Narcissa said -"

"That's enough," Lucius said, holding up his hand. The elf returned to his place beside the hearth and started pulling at his ears. Narcissa set down her spoon, drained her wine in one long gulp, and started to stand up.

"I am not hungry anymore," she said.

"Sit. Down," Lucius replied. Draco was watching the whole exchange with an expression of sudden interest as Iphany contemplated crawling under the table. "What's for seconds, or dare I even ask?"

"Baked trout," Narcissa replied. Lucius rolled his eyes and dabbed his mouth.

"Clear the soup, Yanna," he said. Draco started to make a noise of protest but was silenced by half a turn of Lucius' head in his direction. The elf obeyed and the offensive dish was replaced by wide oval platters bearing whole fish on a bed of scalloped potatoes. Iphany heaved a sigh of relief and took up her fork.

"So you're starting at Hogwarts this year," Draco said after a moment. He still would not look at her, but at least someone was talking. Iphany nodded and spoke around bites of trout.

"So I have been told. Do you enjoy it? I've been taught at home for so long I can't imagine what it must be like." She took a sip of water, wisely masked her disgust, and tried to be discrete about adding salt.

"I wanted to go to Durmstrang," he replied. "Mother wouldn't have it. Says Hogwarts is safer."

"Not for everyone," Lucius interjected. Iphany looked up and caught the end of a dark grin sliding off his mouth. "As long as that old fool is still Headmaster, Hogwarts will continue to cater to mudbloods and cowards. But no matter, all will be remedied soon enough."

"You mean when I snag that Potter boy and bring him to Voldemort," Iphany offered. Draco choked and had to push back from the table. Perhaps they did not talk strategy at dinner? Iphany was accustomed to discussing murder and mayhem in the same way that she described her progress with schoolwork. She made a mental note, based on the reaction, to review her thoughts more closely before speaking.

"If you snag that Potter boy," Lucius replied. "Your father had great confidence in your ability to do so, but are you prepared? Do you know enough about him? He is surrounded by friends and supporters, many of whom will not be as susceptible to your abilities."

Iphany bristled and straightened up in her seat. Not susceptible indeed. She glanced down at her silverware to disguise the concentration it took to peel back the layers of control she had over her more persuasive powers, and after a moment or two she looked up at Draco.

"Eat that fish head," she said. Draco dropped his fork, took the trout's head in one hand, and popped it between his teeth with a loud, squelching crunch.

"Stop that!" Narcissa shrieked. She jumped up from the table and rushed around to Draco's side, grabbed his face and yanked the fish out of his mouth. Lucius remained impassive as he sipped the amber liquid in his snifter.

"Nothing that a clever Imperio couldn't do," he said. "And not very subtle, either. Oh sit down, Narcissa. Stop being so dramatic. It isn't going to kill him."

"Darling, are you all right?" Narcissa asked as she patted Draco's back. Red-faced and glaring, he shrugged her away.

"I'm fine," he said through gritted teeth. Narcissa hovered behind him, her expression careening between fury and fear. Before Iphany could apologize, Draco shoved himself out of his chair, snatched out his wand, and pointed it at her.

"Petrificus -"

"Protego!" Lucius shouted. She hadn't even seen him draw his wand, but his was the spell that held. Draco's jinx ricocheted off the protection charm and bounced up to hit the chandelier; it swayed hard enough to extinguished several of the candles in their glass holders. Iphany let out a small scream and covered her head with her hands.

"Are we all quite finished?!" Lucius roared. Everyone froze and looked at him; the chandelier slowed and the smell of wax and smoke drifted down over the table. Iphany bit her tongue, sucked in her cheeks and clenched her fists. It wasn't enough. Laughter burst out in a long, loud, inappropriate cackle. She covered her mouth and doubled over in her seat as tears spilled out beneath her lashes, waiting for the inevitable chastising.

The rebuke she anticipated did not come; instead she heard Lucius' eloquent baritone chuckle rising up to meet hers, followed by the sound of Draco snorting into his fist. She peered between her fingers and grinned, dimly aware as Narcissa turned an apoplectic shade of purple and stalked out of the dining room.

"I'm sorry I made you eat a fish head," Iphany gasped. This brought on a new round of laughter as Lucius and Draco resumed their seats. Iphany felt immediately more comfortable, as though some portended storm had decided to pass her by.

"It's all right," said Draco. He was back to avoiding her eyes, but his expression was one of cautious respect rather than anger. "I'm going to get you back, I just haven't decided how yet."

The amicable challenge brought both a thrill and a sudden wave of resentment. Her father had denied her friendship, camaraderie, the simple pleasure of youthful deviance. Nobody had ever bothered to enjoy her company before. They were either paid, in the case of her tutors, enslaved like Blat, or utterly indifferent, as her father was.

"Will you be my friend?" She asked Draco, unaware of how pathetic the words sounded until they met her own ears. She blushed furiously and stabbed at a potato.

"Sure," he said. "Wanna go out after dinner and try out my new broom? It's a Cyclone m-"

"I don't think so," said Lucius. Iphany glanced over at him, her anger returning. The laughter had fled his eyes and he was glaring at her in silent, cold appraisal. She shivered, but wasn't entirely sure why. The lighthearted moment had passed, and in its place the invisible wall around her took shape again, fortifications renewed.

You can't have friends. You don't deserve friends, came a hateful voice in her mind. She felt her body wither into itself and her song descend to an inaudible whisper. What was I thinking?

Dinner commenced without further incident. Lucius engaged his son in a discussion about the summer Quidditch schedule and his plans to sojourn to the regional finals in Italy with someone named Blaze, who apparently had a very good-looking mother. Her appetite sated, Iphany began to feel the first stirrings of sea-longing, though the desire fizzled when she remembered she would be swimming in a charmed pond rather than the cove. She hoped it would be enough, but suspected it would be like drinking water to quench a thirst for wine.

After a while she excused herself, ignoring Draco's furtive glance of something like longing as she thanked Lucius for dinner and asked him to pass her apologies on to Narcissa. He waved her off with a negligent hand. She did not notice the other one, balled in his lap beneath the table, nails digging bloody crescents into his palm.

. . . .

At least the moon still loves me.

It was the first coherent thought she had as she stepped out of the pond and settled on the neatly trimmed grass. It was much warmer here than in Shallycob, and there were almost no clouds to hide the stars from view. The gathering of trees around the water made her less self-conscious about lying naked beneath the open sky, but the proximity of the house and the lighted windows made her pull on her damp under-slip after only a minute or two.

So quiet, she thought, her ears ringing in the absence of crashing waves. Something else was missing, too; she could not name it, could not place it beyond the sensation of a deep sort of itch or ache in her bones. She rubbed her hands vigorously over her thighs, reminded of the dream she had about her mother so long ago.

She took something from me.

Iphany stood up and blew out an impatient breath. It would not do to muck about in a past she could not remember. It had only been a dream, after all, a lonely little girl's dream. She gathered up her dress-robe and flung it over her arm, not ready to put it back on while the warmth of the moon still lingered over her skin. A cobbled path led back to the house, through the low blooming night-jasmine and roses. Their fragrance seemed rich and exotic compared to the acrid scent-memory of salt and sand. She paused and plucked a crimson bud from the rose bush and tucked it behind one ear.

Once back inside, the thought of going to bed did not once cross her mind. Wandering around aimlessly wasn't much of an option either, as she could only imagine what Narcissa would do if she caught Iphany cavorting about the manor in a half-soaked slip in the middle of the night.

It occurred to Iphany that this place ought to have a library, and probably one far grander than the one at home. She glanced about for a house Elf -

"Can I help you, Mistress Iphany Novara?" Squealed a voice at knee level, and Iphany glanced down.

"Yes," She replied, squinting in the darkness. "Take me to the library."

Yanna nodded and skittered down the hallway, touching walls as he went to make the oil lamps cough and sputter to life. Iphany followed in silence, grateful that until she learned her way around, there'd be an elf to show her the way. The Malfoys trained their servants well.

She opened the heavy door the elf indicated, pausing a moment to admire the carvings and silver snake-molded knobs. In here, the lamps were already partially lit and a fire blazed in the hearth. Another mark of good service - somehow they'd known she was coming, and had been clever enough to prepare the way for her. Most the ring of illumination only breached the center of the darkness, leaving the rest of the room to pool in shadow. But the shelves were bursting with books, leather-bound with glittering spines. Some lay open on tables, places marked by silk ribbons, a stack of parchment and a charmed quill scratching out notes as the pages turned of their own accord.

One in particular caught her eye, a pristine volume of "Mystical Creatures and their Questionable Origins" all the way up on the fourth shelf. Frowning, she recalled that she'd left her wand on the dresser upstairs. No matter. She climbed up on the first two sturdy shelves, hiked up her skirt so it wouldn't snag on the corners, then perched on her knees on the third shelf, legs arranged just so beneath her to keep her from falling.

Lucius Malfoy watched, transfixed, from his chair just outside the ring of light. When she'd first come in, he'd had every intention of announcing his presence. But before he could speak she drew the damp skirt around her thighs and in a few nimble movements was balanced on the shelf. He could see the muscles of her legs shivering ever so slightly from the strain, the fire-lit outline of her body beneath the slip, the damp frenzied splay of midnight hair plastered against her back. She was glowing, for God's sake, as though she'd managed to carry a bit of moonlight in on her skin. His pulse blistered in his throat as he called out a rough, trembling warning:

"Get out of here."

Iphany yelped and pitched off the self, her landing significantly less graceful than the ascent. Her tailbone met the wood floor with a painful thump.

"Hey!" She shouted, indignant. "I was -"

"Out!" Lucius bellowed. He advanced on her, an elegant beast charging out of the shadows. Iphany cringed at the expression on his face, a mixture of rage and –

He snatched her by the shoulders and hauled her up to stand, ignoring the screaming protest that his body expressed. Instead he dragged her across the room, shoved her out into the hallway, and slammed the door as hard as he could.

Stunned, she did the only thing that prey can do when faced with a predator – she ran.

Lucius leaned his head against the door and listened to the wet slap of her receding footsteps. His entire body shook like it was coming down from the rush of narrowly escaped peril. He thought of the necklace, tucked in his dresser drawer, removed after dinner as he had not expected to see her again. It had been bad before, but tolerable as long as he didn't look at her for too long.

What did I get myself into?

He could send her away, perhaps, to stay with Avery for a while. Then he snorted - Avery would stand about as much of a chance as Draco would when it came to ignoring her. There was always the summer home in Sweden, he could -

Suddenly, the orange glow cast by the fire glazed a bright green, and Lucius turned in time to see Lord Voldemort's head appear in the fire. He was off to the hearth like a shot, kneeling before the fireplace in reverence and humility.

"Lucius. How is she?" Voldemort began, making no excuses for the reason behind his appearance. Lucius smiled and hid his quivering hands behind his back.

"All is well, my Lord. She is impetuous, just like her father, and will likely need more guidance before we unleash her on Potter, but she has all the markings of success," Lucius reported, a smile touching his face at the memory of Draco chewing on a fish head. He hoped against hope that Voldemort would not sense his agitation, the arousal that still pounded against his defenses.

"Tell me, Lucius - she is beautiful, isn't she? I've not yet seen her in person, Icarus advised against it, but he showed me an Imago once, when she was younger."

"You will not be disappointed," Lucius replied. "There are no words to describe her."

"Keep your hands off my pet," the Dark Lord said with a smirk. "I'd hate to lose you too."

The implicit threat lingered long after the fire burned yellow and orange again.


End file.
